Closer To God
IV
“We’re Going To Mombasa”
We didn’t make it to the Railway Station, instead stopping the small van down around City Central near Kenyatta Avenue. The driver, conductor and two other teen passengers had remained silent during our trip, not that it would have made much difference with rock blasting from all the speakers. The conductor had rotated once to look at us, with attitude, but something about us had kept him from commenting, or doing anything else.
Burt and I were broke. We had to have cash, which meant we needed an ATM. A few businesses would take credit cards, but not many, even in a large developed city like Nairobi. Africa was third world, outside of a very few places. Our Teeny Matata plunged back into the ‘fishball’ of traffic as soon as we were out. I watched my Omega disappear with a glum expression.
“Got a cell phone?” I inquired of Burt, hoping that I had not been wrong about his over-supplied pack rat nature. I was not disappointed. He handed a small phone over to me.
“Will it work here?” I said, opening the Star Trek flip cover. I wasn’t sure why I’d asked the question, as I already knew the answer. Burt didn’t bother to reply.
I examined the phone. It gave the time of day in big numbers on the screen. I knew that young people did not even wear watches anymore. They got their time from cell phones. I wasn’t that young.
“Agency?” I went on.
“Safaricom chip,” Burt said back. That meant the phone was on a local system instead of any international. It was a relatively untraceable way to communicate, but I wasn’t thinking of calling anyone until we knew more of what we were involved with. Phone calls would give more information out than I was comfortable with. I wondered what other toys Burt had. The mission had been cadged together at the last minute. There had been no clearance meetings, or even initial planning sessions. Things like ingress, egress, communications, armament,
and even financing, had been thrust upon us instead of being homogeneously put together with forethought and design. I put the phone in my pocket. Now I had a bulge on each side, but high fashion was not something common to Eastern Africa.
“Braclays is over in Queensway House on Kuanda,” I pointed out.
I walked in that direction, looking around to see if any of our pursuers had picked us up. If they were Agency personnel we would not have much time on our own. The Agency was terrific at surveillance, and two white guys in downtown Nairobi would not be too hard to find no matter who was looking.
We walked into the lobby of the bank. There were private security guards stationed everywhere, including one on each side of a bank of ATMs. I inserted one of my Visa debit cards, punched in the four-digit code and hoped. Local shillings were all we were going to get from any ATM in the country, which was okay, except for the fact that the largest shilling note issued was for a thousand. With the exchange rate running at about seventy shillings to the dollar, that meant a
Thousand-shilling note was only worth about thirteen dollars.
I used four cards to get a total of sixty thousand shillings out of the machine. The stack of bills was over an inch thick. I shoved the folded wad into my back pocket and we headed for the door. Nine hundred bucks, or so, would have to do.
There was nobody noticeable on Kaunda Street, so we crossed to the Catholic Basilica. We went straight in through a huge gothic entrance. The place was straight out of the dark ages, with tourists gathered together in small guided clumps.
I took Burt all the way to the front of the huge old church and sat him in the front pew. Unconsciously, I genuflected before taking a seat next to him. The lighting was dim to the point of darkness. The place was perfect.
“Stay here. I’ve got to berth us aboard the train going east tonight.
I’m less noticeable alone. Whatever we ran into started down there, where Smith died, so we’re going back to the scene of the crime, if we live that long.”
I looked over at the big man, wondering what the hell he was doing. I was known for my rather unconventional behavior, which had gotten us into the mess we were in, but it was uncommon for wet workers like Burt to be anything but sticklers for following Agency directives and rules.
“What about the woman? You told her to meet us. You don’t think she’ll come?” Burt asked. I rubbed my forehead, thinking for a moment.
“I do think she’ll come, but I don’t want to take her to Mombasa on this, not that she would go. I wanted her to meet us so I could talk to her about what she knows. We can’t drive all night down to Mombasa. We’d be sitting ducks on that rough road. The Agency has drones. We have to hope that whoever is after us will calculate that we’ll run to Jomo and fly out as quickly as we can.”
“We’re going to Mombasa?” Burt asked.
“Yes, we’ve got to get out of Nairobi.
“We’re going to Mombasa,” Burt repeated, this time with a strange tone of enthusiasm. I had more questions about his involvement but they could wait until we were on the train.
I left him there, heading of across the downtown common area for the station. I realized that I should have asked to see if he had a second phone, when the cell phone in my pocket rang. It was Burt.
“I have another phone. The number’s on the dialer, titled King Kong.”
I thought about his self-derived nickname he had given himself. I tucked away a thought to examine his phone to see what he’d chosen for me.
“Thanks,” I responded, not knowing what to say. The man was proving to be an enigma, like maybe a bear with human intelligence would be. Burt hung up. I waited until I was tucked into a corner alcove of the Kenya Bank, right across Haile Selassie Avenue from the station, and then flipped the phone open again. I called Staff Sergeant Stevens, hoping he was still around. I was compromising the cell phone by calling the Embassy, but I had little choice. I had to have more data. I did not believe that the Agency had sent men to kill me. It was just not done. There was no need. They could just recall me and lock me up any time they wanted. They didn’t need to kill field agents. They had worse punishments. Imprisonment and loss of retirement were much more feared punishments, and very commonly applied. In the final analysis, when Burt had been instructed to shoot me, he had refused. Field agents did not kill field agents. There was no career left to an agent who participated in such action, and we all knew it. It was not even entirely believable that he had been ordered to do such a thing.
“I can’t tell you anything at this point,” Stevens said, without preamble. I held the phone out and stared at it for a second. Whether Burt’s phone was already target material, or whether Stevens had been waiting for an unknown call, I did not know, but there was no point asking. Stevens was a Marine, first and foremost, above wife, country and even God. It resonated through him.
“Is she coming?” I asked.
“Tower, in twenty,” he said, and then hung up. I turned to my right and looked up at the tallest building in East Africa. The Times Tower. That was the tower. Twenty, in Marine parlance meant twenty minutes. She was coming. I was relieved, and intrigued, by her conduct. I hadn’t been absolutely sure that she would come. Not nearly as certain as I’d led Burt to believe.
Seeing no one of any consequence over at the long cinder block construct of a railway station, I crossed the street and entered the facility. I was always surprised that it was clean. Even the bathrooms were clean. And the rain earlier in the day had helped, giving the place a fresh, although local, scent. I went to the line of booths under a sign that said “Kenya Railroad Berthing Allotment.’ I could not help looking around suspiciously as I approached the attendant behind his bars.
“Two, first class cabin for Mombasa.” The man looked at me, the black visor of his blue cap shined to a high luster. As a former Marine myself, I could tell that it was polished leather and not the fake Corfam junk. There was one train to Mombasa every night. It arrived there, from Nairobi, early in the morning. Tickets were booked in advance, and for cash.
“Papers,” the man said, primly, holding out one hand toward the slot
under the bars.
I took out my wad of shillings, peeled off four of them, then slid them through the slot. The 1st class fare to Mombasa was posted on the chalk board behind the man. It said nine hundred shillings. I waited. He stared down.
“For two,” he said. “Private room with clean bedding and first service in the dining car.” The money was gone when I looked down. I had not seen the man’s hands move. He took two tickets from a drawer, shoved them toward the slot, then looked behind him and made believe he was concentrating on something else. I let him, taking the tickets and walking back toward the platform, until I saw the woman.
A white woman stood out form the building, peering up and down the platform, as if looking for a train. But there was no train, nor would there be until the evening run was ready to be made at around seven. The events at the Safari Park had occurred so quickly and intently that I could not recall if the woman was the same as the one with the camera crew. But she was looking for something. And I knew I was being looked for. I went into the restroom without going out onto the platform. From a stall I called King Kong and filled him in, about the woman and about Joan’s pending arrival, now only fifteen minutes away. Burt’s analysis was better than mine. If the woman was there, then the others would be in the area. We decided that I would try for the Railroad Museum just north of the station.
Before leaving the bathroom stall I removed a full roll of toilet paper. I carried it with me in my right hand.
The station was not crowded, which was unfortunate for my purposes, although no one gave me the slightest glance as I went out to the street side, gained the far edge of the building, and then darted across a twenty yard concrete expanse. The Railroad Museum was right there, with an old engine and cars lined up next to it. I hid behind the cars, kneeling to look up from under them. I did not observe any extraordinary interest or pursuit. After a five-minute wait, I did see the woman. She stood at the outside lip of the wooden platform. She gestured with one hand toward someone who seemed to be in the direction of my position, but I couldn’t see who she might be waving at. Finally, I went through the door into the museum.
The object of the woman’s attention was obvious once I was through the door. A large white male stood in front of me, his arms extending up and outward, as if to engulf me. Without thinking of the potential of terrible repercussions, my left hand went down. I brought the small forty-five up out of my pocket, flicked off the double-sided safety and walked right into the arms of the huge man. His attempt to grasp me never reached conclusion. I jammed the AMT into the side of the toilet paper roll, pressed the arrangement hard into his belly and squeezed the trigger.
The sound was not nearly as loud as I thought it would be.
The toilet paper roll shredded, but the man, amazingly, did not go down. Instead he held both hands to his stomach, an awful expression of pain on his face and a mewling grown coming form his open mouth. I marveled. The man appeared to be made of something tougher than hide, gristle and hair.
I ran, using a casual lope, which covered ground quickly but made me look more like a jogger than someone running from something. The gun stayed clutched in my left hand, so small it was invisible to anyone who might have been looking my way. I could not have run with a two-pound chunk of metal in one front pocket.
One thick hand waved from around the far side of the bank building, as I approached.
“What happened?” Burt asked, when I pulled up next to him, reseating the gun out of view.
“What in God’s name are you using for ammo?” I shot back. I had never known a forty-five round, at close range, fired into a man’s torso, to leave him standing and complaining0.
“Shot-shell,” Burt said, rather ruefully. I waited, looking back around the corner for some sign of pursuit, but there was none. When my head swung back I spotted the Pajero across the side street, just pulling up to the steps of the Times Tower. Burt saw it to. We started out together while he talked.
“I load a cartridge of birdshot as the first round. In all my guns. I’ve had a few occasions where I shot the wrong guy. A few years back I decided that I’d rather apologize for causing pain and misery than live with the other result.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The man was demonstrating an application of intellect and good judgment that I had never seen from any gun or pyrotechnics expert I had ever met. His forethought had saved the day. There would be no unexplainable dead body at the museum. No Caucasian ‘tourist’ slain by terrorists or robbers. The man I had hit would be marginally injured and very likely ambulatory. No cordons. No investigations. Our train trip was still possible.
“What’s the second round, some sort of nuclear device?” I asked, not entirely kidding. Burt didn’t answer. We were upon the car, which was not driven by Joan.
A young blond male with short hair sat behind the wheel. I got in behind him, while Burt went around. The DCM was in the front passenger seat.
“Drive into the traffic,” I told the kid, assuming he was one of Steven’s Marines. Without a word he wedged us in among the Matatas, trucks, and other conveyances trying to get from Kenyatta onto Mombasa Road. I looked behind us, but could not make out anything, but realized we had been either followed to the Railway Station without our realizing it or our behavior had been predicted.
“Thanks for coming,” I said to Joan, “and who are you?” I followed, rapping the youngster on his right shoulder .
“Corporal Sam Hill, Sir,” he answered. “I got the week off for leave but nowhere to go. Sergeant said I might come with you guys, if that’s okay.”
He looked to be a teenager to me, but most Marines do, as I get older.
“A guy just got shot back at the museum, and we’re being hunted by people we don’t know. Are you sure you want a piece of this?” I retorted. I didn’t mention that I’d done the shooting.
“Yes, sir,” the boy-child replied, filled with enthusiasm.
“Why’d you come?” I asked Joan, noting that her medium cut brown hair was perfectly combed. It seemed to float around her head. When she turned to face me, it bounced on its own a few times. I felt a warm glow. She’d carefully prepared to see me again.
“I wasn’t doing anything else,” she said, then smiled for the first time since I’d encountered her. I had a million questions I wanted to ask her but none of them had anything to do with our current situation.
“Thank you,” I repeated, getting control of myself, enough to find out what we needed to know. “How did your husband get involved in a CIA operation?” I asked her, directly.
“He’s not my husband, and I don’t know, but I know he did. What was it all about?” she asked me, in return. I noted that the nails of her left hand, draped over the side of the seat, were manicured, and painted to a high gloss. I could not tell the color, as blue was the only color I really saw well at all. Her eyes were intensely blue, with thick brows over them. I could see those. She had a stunning presence.
“What happened to Smith, down in Mombasa?” I countered, ignoring her question.
“It didn’t’ start in Mombasa,” she replied. “It ended there, down in that prison outside of town.”
“Shimo la Tiwa?” I asked? I knew the prisons of Kenya. Not hellholes like the prison typified in the movie Midnight Express, put out in the seventies, but dirty bad places to try to survive in, especially for a Caucasian.
“G.K,” she said, shaking her head, “I think it was called, from what I heard.”
G.K. were the two letters mounted above the iron grate entrance to Shimo prison. I’d never found out what they stood for, but I said nothing to Joan. We had a location to work back from. It was also instructive that Smith had been in prison, not in jail. It spoke of an unlikely permanence.
“Where did it start?” I asked her.
“What?” Joan replied, not focused on the data I was trying to get from her.
“Smith. You said all of it started somewhere. Where?” I asked, patiently.
“Oh,” she answered, taking her time. I wondered if it was because of perplexity or evasion. “At the Embassy. Smith came to see Paul at the Embassy.
Neither of them were happy about the meeting, but I don’t know what they talked about.”
“Was your Communications Director present for the meeting?” I inquired, wanting to know if the local CIA ‘cowboy’ stationed at the Embassy was involved.
“That guy?” she came back. “Tyrell? No, why would he be there?”
I couldn’t believe that the DCM of a major embassy could remain unaware of the facility’s only CIA operative, however ceremonial his role was, but I let it pass.
I would deal with Tyrell later.
“We’re going down there, to Mombasa,” I told her, not really understanding why I was giving her any information whatsoever. I just felt that I had to trust somebody and, for some reason I could not fathom, I found the DCM to be imminently trustable.
“The train. You’re taking the train tonight, aren’t you?” she correctly assumed. “You’re going after Rafiq, aren’t you?”
I didn’t answer. Rafiq Salim was the name of our Lebanese target from the mission. I tried to think of why Joan would think we would pursue him down in Mombasa. The Agency had informed me that he lived in Nairobi where he ran a jewelry business. Without prompting, she gave me the answer.
“He lives down there. His family runs one of the ferries.”
I almost groaned aloud. Whatever we were involved in just kept getting more and more complex. I couldn’t seem to find any truth in anything.
“What do you want me to do, sir?” the corporal asked.
“Well for one, Sam Hill, I want you to stop calling me sir. My name is Jack.” I didn’t make the obligatory joke about ‘Sam Hell’ as I presumed he had been living with that all of his life. “Then, when we’re done here, I want you to drive this vehicle down to Mombasa. You have a cell phone?” The boy handed me a white card, like the generic Marine Corps card Staff Sergeant Stevens had given me. There was a Kenyan number on it in pencil. A ton of numbers really, but they seemed to work.
I noted that he was attired in a worn canvas outfit, with lots of pockets. He looked like an assistant to a tour director for one of the tourist ‘safari’ adventures, or maybe one of the redemption-seeking workers for an aid agency. In Kenya to seek redemption from living a life of spoiled ease and meaninglessness.
Joan’s information, if it was valid, changed everything. Mombasa was revealing itself as the key to our mystery, or at least the place where the key might be found.
“When you get down there, and you should arrive hours before us, go to the Inter-Continental and hang out. I’ll call you. We need a car down there, and it might as well be this one.” I could not rent a car for cash in Kenya. Renting another car, no matter what the bribe, would take a host of paper and plastic backup I was not willing to give out. I no longer believed that the Agency was after us. But somebody with assets and motivation was. I was not going to give them anymore than I absolutely had to.
“The embassy is locked down,” Joan said.
“How’d you get out?” I asked, but then didn’t wait for an answer, already knowing that Stevens was at work. The Ambassador would be howling mad when he discovered his ex-wife, his DCM, was not there. “When you going back?”
“Tomorrow. I’ll catch a Matata home. I don’t understand any of this and I need to think, and maybe drink half a bottle of Grey Goose while I do it. Can we go somewhere and talk? Do you have time? Is there some place?”
I was surprised by her request. I was also surprised, however, that she had gotten out from under an embassy lockdown. The woman was starting to amaze me even more than Burt. We had several hours to kill before getting aboard the train, and we needed to be someplace where we could be off the streets. The bottle of Grey Goose sounded wonderful, but it was not to be.
“The Java House, on Argwings, just off Kenyatta, you know it?” I said to the corporal.
“Kinda,” he answered, biting the sir off before it came out of his mouth. He made me feel old and slow, totally unlike what I got from Joan.
“Make it so,” I said, emulating Jon Luke Piccard from Star Trek.
“Engage,” he laughed back, diving out of the traffic, across two medians and reversing our course of travel. I noted that another vehicle tried the same maneuver but only managed to create a massive traffic tie-up behind us. Whoever they were, they were persistent and good. Just not as good as a crazy teen-aged Marine driving a Pajero in downtown Nairobi.
“What changed?” I said to Joan, as the Pajero rocked back and forth, avoiding all manner of obstacles I tried not to pay attention to, only too happy to be taking the train instead of riding with Sam.
“What changed about what?” she retorted, holding fast to the sissy bar mounted above her window.
Communicating with the woman was maddening.
“We’re going to Mombasa,” Burt said, unaccountably.
http://www.jamesstraussauthor.com
http://www.themastodons.com
http://from-the-chateau-dif.blogspot.com
Scientists have discovered how to “read” minds by scanning brain activity and reproducing images of what people are seeing — or even remembering.
Researchers have been able to convert into crude video footage the brain activity stimulated by what a person is watching or recalling.
The breakthrough raises the prospect of significant benefits, such as allowing people who are unable to move or speak to communicate via visualisation of their thoughts; recording people’s dreams; or allowing police to identify criminals by recalling the memories of a witness.
However, it could also herald a new Big Brother era, similar to that envisaged in the Hollywood film Minority Report, in which an individual’s private thoughts can be readily accessed by the authorities.
Jack Gallant and Shinji Nishimoto, two neurologists from the University of California, Berkeley, last year managed to correlate activity in the brain’s visual cortex with static images seen by the person. Last week they went one step further by revealing that it is possible to “decode” signals generated in the brain by moving scenes.
In an experiment which has yet to be peer reviewed, Gallant and Nishimoto, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology, scanned the brains of two patients as they watched videos.
A computer programme was used to search for links between the configuration of shapes, colours and movements in the videos, and patterns of activity in the patients’ visual cortex.
It was later fed more than 200 days’ worth of YouTube internet clips and asked to predict which areas of the brain the clips would stimulate if people were watching them.
Finally, the software was used to monitor the two patients’ brains as they watched a new film and to reproduce what they were seeing based on their neural activity alone.
Remarkably, the computer programme was able to display continuous footage of the films they were watching — albeit with blurred images.
In one scene which featured the actor Steve Martin wearing a white shirt, the software recreated his rough shape and white torso but missed other details, such as his facial features.
Another scene, showing a plane flying towards the camera against a city skyline, was less successfully reproduced. The computer recreated the image of the skyline but omitted the plane altogether.
“Some scenes decode better than others,” said Gallant. “We can decode talking heads really well. But a camera panning quickly across a scene confuses the algorithm.
“You can use a device like this to do some pretty cool things. At the moment when you see something and want to describe it to someone you have to use words or draw it and it doesn’t work very well.
“You could use this technology to transmit the image to someone. It might be useful for artists or to allow you to recover an eyewitness’s memory of a crime.”
Such technology may not be confined to the here and now. Scientists at University College London have conducted separate tests that detect, with an accuracy of about 50%, memories recalled by patients.
The discoveries come amid a flurry of developments in the field of brain science. Researchers have also used scanning technology to measure academic ability, detect early signs of Alzheimer’s and other degenerative conditions, and even predict the decision a person is about to make before they are conscious of making it.
Such developments may have controversial ramifications. In Britain, fMRI scanning technology has been sold to multinational companies, such as Unilever and McDonald’s, enabling them to see how we subconsciously react to brands.
In America, security agencies are researching the use of brain scanners for interrogating prisoners, and Lockheed Martin, the US defence contractor, is reported to have studied the possibility of scanning brains at a distance.
This would allow an individual’s thoughts and anxieties to be examined without their knowledge in sensitive locations such as airports.
Russell Foster, a neuroscientist at Oxford University, said rapid advances in the field were throwing up ethical dilemmas.
“It’s absolutely critical for scientists to inform the public about what we are doing so they can engage in the debate about how this knowledge should be used,” he said.
“It’s the age-old problem: knowledge is power and it can be used for both good and evil.”
What the hell, I'll put it on her anyway. What are they going to do, kick me off?
Closer to God
Hakuna Matata
III
The reinforced double-steel door of the underground parking lot slowly retracted sideways across our view. It was too impossibly heavy to rise vertically. We sat waiting in the Pajero, DCM next to me in the passenger seat and Burt just behind her. Staff Sergeant Stevens pushed another button and rock barriers at the top of the drive began to sink into pre-formed slots. He held up one hand, watching the stones, until they were gone, replaced by metal grates that snapped loudly into place. His hand moved and became a salute. The kind only a Marine is capable of making. I nodded at the man, putting the Nissan into gear. Mrs. Haggerty waved to him, as well, but I knew the salute was intended for me. I smiled my appreciation. His arm came down. He pointed at the windshield as I drove by. I looked at the small white card under the wiper, then reached my hand around through the open window and claimed it.
Bright afternoon sun had replaced the rain, and a cooling wind blew through the Pajero’s open windows, as we waited to take a left onto Limuru Road. Traffic was heavy, and Kenyan’s gave no quarter when it came to driving. We plunged into the melee but didn’t have far to go. Muthaig’s crowning feature was the Safari Park, Kenya’s only real five star hotel with any local flavor.
We waited to take the turn into the hotel.
“May I call you Joyce?” I asked.
“No, you may not,” the DCM shot back, not looking at me, instead examining the wedding band still located on the appropriate finger of her left hand. “You can call me Joan,” she relented. “I hate the name Joyce.”
“You look terrific, Joan,” I said, quite truthfully.
“Fuck off,” Joan stated, her voice evidencing disgust, “don’t try your smooth, urbane, man-of-the-world crap on me.”
I checked the rear view mirror, to see Burt trying to cover his smile with one hand. He avoided my eyes.
“Thank you,” she followed up, unaccountably. The woman was confounding me. I was afraid to speak, but felt somehow, that she wanted me to say something.
I was in a verbal minefield.
“How long have you been divorced?” I tried, figuring that almost every divorced person I had ever met loved to talk about the divorce, and how rotten the other person was.
“None of your God damned business,” she hissed, massaging her wedding band hand, but looking out the side window. I waited for more, but nothing came.
“Two years?” I offered.
“Two years?” she turned on me, speaking the words loud enough to make me raise my right shoulder and wince. “Two years? What kind of idiot are you? Oh, I almost forgot, you’re a spook. One of those Southern-Fried-Chicken-University types who populate Langley. What’d you major in, Bo Weevil Mating? If I’d been divorced for two years, do you think I’d still be the DCM for that idiot?” Spittle hit my cheek.
I heard a barely audible giggle from behind me, but I didn’t look in the mirror. I finally hustled the Pajero through the broken ‘tiger-teeth’ jam of the opposing traffic.
“Ah, no,” I blurted out to her series of questions, driving as fast as I could manage to get to the hotel as quickly as possible.
“No, what?” she yelled. “No, you have a degree is something else, like maybe Burro Husbandry, or ‘Poor-White-Trash’ farming?” I shook my head, in agony.
The huge pyramidal structure of the Safari Park main building appeared and I headed the car for it like it was a laser-guided smart bomb. Supposedly the willow reed thatched buildings had been designed with clues taken from native Kenyan hovels, but in truth, there was nothing in the country that looked like the place.
Without meaning to, I skidded the Pajero to a halt directly in front of the lobby, and jumped out. I moved around the vehicle to get Joan’s door, but one of the bellmen had already attended to that. She stood waiting. Burt was out and leaning against the back fender, as if ready to enjoy more of the show. The show being my complete humiliation.
Joan headed straight for the lobby. I followed closely behind her, noting how powerfully she strode, her black pumps clicking loudly across the tiled floor of the entrance. Burt ran into me, because I had run into Joan. She had stopped too suddenly for me to avoid her. The three of us grabbed one another and swayed.
“Oh great, slimed by a Halloween spook,” she exclaimed, pushing herself from my fumbling grasp.
“Would you stop that?” I said, as quietly as I could to her retreating back.
“Look what happened to the last guy who got outed on your watch?” I followed up. She flinched, but kept walking.
“Good one,” Burt whispered behind me, which made me frown.
We trailed behind the fast moving woman through the lobby and out the back, around a great blue pool surrounded with palm trees of all sizes, and on past the cascading series of wonderful waterfalls that gave all the interior rooms of the establishment a special serenity. The Hilton, and the Sarova hotels have better rooms than the Safari, but none can come close to matching its ambiance. I knew where we were headed. The Nyama Choma Ranch Restaurant was the only thing left between us and the Muthaiga jungle forest. It was simply the finest African food restaurant in Kenya. Nothing else was close. I yearned for an Ostrich steak covered in Monkey-brain gravy. No monkeys involved, of course. Its only a name.
Under one side branch of the falls I caught a flash of movement. Then it was gone. It had been part of a head, sticking out of the bushes, viewing our arrival. I slowed. Burt stumbled into me. I was a little shaken, as I came to a stop, while Joan disappeared into the opening of the restaurant.
“What?” Burt inquired, backing up a step.
“I wouldn’t take an oath on it, but I think the Lebanese just checked us out from beyond the falls.” The water pouring down upon the rocks made talking difficult, but Burt got my message. He turned automatically, putting a palm trunk between himself and the falls.
“You still got that hand cannon under your coat?” I asked, remaining in the open. If we had walked into an ambush no thin palm tree was going to save us.
Burt nodded, but did not make any moves to access it.
“Got anything else?” I asked, feeling a bit naked.
Burt showed me three fingers, held down at his side. Special Forces hand chatter. I always liked the one where the leader takes two fingers of one hand and aims them at his own eyes, so everyone will look at him. In practice, however, I’d found that the gesture, like so many, was all for show. Anybody who could see the gesture was already looking.
“Three?” I said, in amazement. “The Mau Mau’s were put down in 1960, for Christ’s sake. Give me anything small.”
Burt leaned down by genuflecting on right knee, hand sweeping back to flick the bottom of his pant leg upward. Quickly and smoothly, like an unfolding python, the thick muscular man rose up and delicately inserted a .45 Caliber AMT automatic into my open left hand. I stuck it immediately into my front trouser pocket. The five shot auto was small, yet as thick as a full blown Colt. The bulge was noticeable, but I had little choice. Klingon’s preferred to die fighting in combat, or so they said on Star Trek, and I was not going down unarmed.
“What does it mean?” Burt whispered, his eyes never leaving the area of the falls.
“I don’t know. Not good. What would he come here for? If Haggerty decided on Executive Action, then why would the man come where the man is? He’s a U.S. Ambassador, for God’s sake. And how would he know where he was? I haven’t been able to make sense out of anything since we were out there on the Serengeti.” Joan came back out of the restaurant, looking even more impatient then when she’d walked in.
“What the hell are you doing?” she hissed, clicking up to us.
“Admiring the falls,” I covered.
“Oh great, a gay spook and his cultured Troglodyte,” she complained, in exasperation. “Paul’s in there having lunch with one of his mysterious companions.
Should I announce you or do you want to make a grand entrance?”
“We’re coming. Please show us the way,” was all I could say. The woman did not elicit lengthy response, not without dealing out considerable pain.
“What’s a Troglodyte?” Burt asked, from behind. I was about to answer when I had another thought. I stopped again, this time with the four-top table, where the Ambassador sat with some unidentified white male, in sight. “Back out Burt, this could be a hit on Haggerty.” Why else would the Lebanese not take a taxi home, but instead head straight for his antagonist. Who was the Lebanese? He’d acted as prey, very convincingly, but he wasn’t acting that way anymore. Burt backed up to the restaurant entrance, and then disappeared into a hidden alcove. I moved to Joan’s side at the table.
“What’s this?” Paul said, slowly getting to his feet. He stared at me in surprise, and recognition. I stood stunned. The man could only have recognized me if he had a file photo. I relaxed a little as I realized that someone might have called him from the embassy. Cell phones worked amazingly well in Nairobi. I didn’t carry one but I was willing to bet that Burt had three or four under his “Q” designed safari rig.
“Sit,” I commanded the DCM, pulling out a chair for her. She hesitated.
“There’s danger here, sit and act like everyone else,” I continued. She took the chair. I sat at the one next to her, across from the two men. The Ambassador joined us.
“What,” he began, but I held up my right hand. I slid my left hand into the .45 pocket at the same time. The automatic was double action, I knew. In the silence over the table a distinct metallic click sounded. The automatic was off safety. All four of us sat frozen.
“You can worry about me later Paul,” I said, conversationally. “The same Lebanese, the subject of our attention a few hours ago, was out by the falls a few minutes ago. I let him off near the airport, where he was supposedly going to go into hiding. I might have erred and cost you your life, but I don’t want Joan here, or your friend, to go out with you. What do you think?” The waiter came over and placed water, without ice, in front of both Joan and I. We sat in silence.
“Ah, how sure are you,” Paul began to ask, but I cut him off.
“This is the Choma, and the waiter just brought us glasses of water, not bottled water like you have.” I smiled, wondering if the man would get it, as I prepared to go to the floor and attempt to crawl behind some nearby decorative rocks. If anybody opened up I could count on Burt to provide intense covering fire, but his ammo wouldn’t last long. The only safety might be found in staying less than a foot off the ground. An assassination at such a notable hotel and restaurant would have to be over in seconds. Surviving the first few seconds would be everything.
“The waiter’s not a waiter?” Joan said in a low tone, her voice shaking. “What have you done Paul? What are we in?”
“Alright,” the Ambassador said, ignoring his ex-wife and speaking directly to me. “Maybe I was wrong about you. I apologize. What do we do?”
I was amazed. The man was apologizing for attempting to kill me. I sighed.
Being an operational agent for the Agency could not be taught in schools or learned in books. It was too bizarre for that.
“We leave. Slowly, without fanfare, you move toward the kitchen over there Paul, while your friend heads for the washroom in back. Joan, you’re going out all the way to the street, where you’ll wait in the Pajero. You drive. I’m going to knock my silverware onto the floor, then lean down to pick it up. If there’s fire, then you all drop and stay where you are, without moving at all. If there’s fire, it‘ll probably be at me, here at the table, where they intended to shoot. The silverware hitting the floor is your cue. Got it?” Nobody said anything. “Tell me you got it?” I instructed.
Joan murmured something, while Paul and his companion said yes at the same time. I pushed my fork onto the floor. It hit with the sound of a ringing bell.
Everyone moved. I went to one knee, then leaned under the table and fell to my stomach, turning to bring the .45 out and up. I had no more time than that. The phony ‘waiter’ stepped out of the bushes holding an old-fashioned double barrel shotgun. The ends of the barrels looked huge, as he stood only two feet over me.
My AMT was only inches from his stomach. I laid there, looking up into his eyes while taking all the slack, and a little more, out of the .45’s trigger. Slowly, he moved the shotgun aside, cocking his head, as if in question. I gave him back the thinnest of smiles, wondering what Burt was thinking, since he wasn’t doing anything. The man stepped back into the bushes and was gone. I breathed for the first time since I’d hit the floor. I then crawled to the front of the restaurant, right past the host at the front desk. He looked down at me in amazement, until he saw the automatic in my hand. Then he dropped down and disappeared.
I got up and began loping back through the areas of the falls and pool. I saw nothing of anyone, save a few tourists laying near the water or taking pictures of everything around. At the main entrance I paused to observe some kind of film crew who were set up down near where cars circled to let people off. The Pajero idled near their large, tri-pod mounted, camera. Several large Caucasian men milled nearby, and one long-haired young woman. The passenger door snapped open. I saw Joan at the wheel and Burt’s hand sticking out from releasing the door. I jumped in.
“I think we’re gonna be famous,” I said, but nobody laughed.
Joan jerked the Pajero into gear and tore off back around the circle, headed for the traffic mess on Limuru Road. “What happened back there?” she asked.
I was about to answer her when Burt made a comment.
“The woman. I saw her. At the airport in Joburg. I think she was on my flight.”
I twisted around to face him, letting go of my seat belt.
“You flew direct from Johannesburg, and she was on the flight?”
Where where you flying to? You came down from Lake Victoria.”
I watched the big man closely. I had come to trust him, but I didn’t know just how far yet.
“Zurich. Then Zurich to down here. I met Walt up at the falls, to check it out. We had a couple days.”
“Shit,” I said, out loud, turning back to face Joan. “Pull down into the traffic, and then stop. Burt and I are getting out. You take the car to the embassy. You should be alright. I pulled Staff Sergeant Steven’s card from my shirt pocket.
Give me your cell phone number.” I took out my pen to write.
“Are you crazy? You’ll get killed out there. All this because somebody was on the same plane? And that whole restaurant thing? You’re looney and paranoid, and maybe dumb as a post.”
“The number,” I repeated, patiently. “There was a guy with a shotgun at the restaurant. I think he was there for your husband.”
“Double gun.” Burt added, from the back seat. I looked back to him in question.
“Looked like one of those Holland and Holland things. Big bore.
Elephant gun.”
I whistled. A gun like that would sell for a cool twenty-five thousand dollars, if not more. Whoever was involved in the mess we’d stepped into was very well heeled. And that was bad news indeed.
“He’s telling the truth?” Joan asked of Burt, her voice going up.
“Yes, Ma’am,” he replied. “Donner is the best there is. Not well liked, but the best there is.”
I would have commented but the back window of the Pajero blew out, along with the rear driver’s side glass. There had been no sound, except the whoosh and tinkle of breaking glass. Joan screamed, then drove recklessly right out into the middle of Limuru Road. Cars, vans and trucks careened and honked, but no contact was made. The SUV stalled out. I looked out the back, through the gaping hole, over the seat where Burt crouched down. The camera crew had scattered to cars and vans, now fighting one another to get out of the narrow driveway.
“The Railroad Station. We’ll wait there. When I call you, come get us.”
I flew between the seats and shot out the driver-side passenger door, Burt behind me.
“Like hell I will,” Joan yelled, “and you don’t have my number.”
I stood and put my hand up against the flow of traffic, which flowed around us like a thick school, of metallic fish. I liked the woman. She was tough as iron and she wouldn’t abandon us after we’d stood up for her. She’d figure it out.
A red mini-van, with a strange hand-painted poster of The Lion King splashed across its front, screeched to a halt, almost touching my hand. A gold stripe ran around the van’s body. I’d stopped a Matata, one of the thousands that constantly prowled the streets of Nairobi. They came in three kinds, regular, gospel and teeny. The regular one’s were for regular people, like most tourists. The gospel one’s blared reborn gospel music at impossibly volumes. The teeny ones were even worse, pumping out acid rock and rap. The latter two were mostly for locals.
Joan got the Pajero started. She joined the traffic flow. The side door of the Matata opened and a young hand waved. Burt and I crawled inside. There were already three teens inside, plus the driver and his ‘conductor,’ who collected the fare. Matatas had gotten their name from their original fare of three shillings. Now, the prices were variable, going all the way up to fifty shillings or more. Fifty shillings being about seventy-five cents American. The Matata didn’t move. Teeny conveyances were weird. They would carry people they liked, or thought were cool for free, or not let you in at all if they didn’t like your look. I could tell that the conductor didn’t like our look.
“You got any money?” I asked Burt. He shook his head. I stared at the evil looking teenager in front of me, trying to ignore the blast of horrid rap coming out of the Matata’s speakers. We had to get the hell out of there. I took off the Omega and held it up.
“Omega, Speedmaster, Astronauts took to the moon, four thousand U.S.” I said. The kid looked at the watch.
“Sare,” he said, then grabbed the watch. Sare, I knew, meant ‘free’ in the local street slang called Sheng. The kids spoke it, like pigeon in Hawaii.
“Sare, my ass,” I responded, angrily. “Railroad Station, right now.”
I tried to see out the windows of the mini van, to see if our new band of followers were there. They had to be. But I also knew they’d never be able to stay on us unless, somehow, they’d been able to attach a GPS unit to our specific Matata. Not likely. Not likely at all.
Matatas were the locusts of Nairobi streets, and they were nearly indistinguishable in outer appearance. We drove Limuru toward Mombasa Road in a veritable sea of them, our vast overpayment of fare overwhelming the driver’s natural tendency to stop for anyone else. Our teenage riders stayed with us to the station, without complaint or comment.
“Who were those guys, anyway?” Burt asked.
“Don’t know,” I answered. “They’re Caucasian, all of ‘em, and I don’t think they’re with the Lebanese. They look like Agency. And they fired on us.”
Ironically, a piece from the Lion King soundtrack blared out from the radio. Hakuna Matata played. I looked around at my fellow passengers. They didn’t seem to get the irony at all. Then the words of the song hit me. “Hakuna Matata! It’s a wonderful phrase. It means no worries for the rest of our days.”
I put my latest chapter of the espionage novel called "Closer to God," on the other blogsite I maintain: http://www.from-the-chateau-dif.blogspot.com, simply because some people have complained when I have put fiction on this site. Not that anybody seems to be reading much on the Obama site anymore. I never get comments at all. You could say that maybe my writing is just not good enough to elicit commentary, but I don't think that is it. The grassroots wonder of what was established by the initiation and continuation of this site before and right after the last election was quite something, and great fun to be a part of. But our population loses direction easily. Our culture bores even more easily. And being fickle today, at home and abroad, defines most Americans and most American policy.
We are making believe our money is worth something, and it is still working...marginally. We are making believe that there are actually jobs to perform in this country, instead of in China, India and Indonesia...where we sent them. Friedman stated, last week in the NY Times, that the fault for that is simply that Americans did not properly prepare and educate ourselves for the future, when they had the chance. The man is a liar and low-life cur, making millions while he laughs about why American's should quite justifiably be paid the same as Chinese peasants. And he golfs with the president, when he should more properly be water-tortured in Gitmo. But there is no real justice in the universe. There is only the eternal movement of information packets. Quantum mechanics. And there is no mercy, consideration, or even intellect at work in quantum activity. We are the merciful, the considerate and the intelligent part of this universe...when we choose to be. Right now, in this period of time, we are choosing to be dumb as hell, and reaping the benefits of that stupidity.
We are so busy admiring, and holding up to high exaltation, the phony 'stars' of our world, that our world is falling apart around us. In the Chicago Tribune, yesterday, the headline was all about people (including families, women and children) living in storage lockers, garden sheds and abandoned cars. The tragedy of it. Above that headline was a four inch column across the page, with a photo of a fifteen million dollar a year baseball player smiling out at us. The Sports section took that photo and made it the size of the whole page. How many people got the subtle distinction of the idiocy illustrated by that presentation? I wonder. Bret Favre is actually given tons of sympathy as he awaits the big Packers/Viking game on Sunday. Sympathy? How many million is he getting to play for two hours? I love his interviews, however. The man is a drooling idiot when it comes to discussing anything other than his 'game.' Its pretty funny, at least.
We are still in Afghanistan. We are fighting the Taliban. We are at war with the Taliban. What the hell happened to declarations of war and Congressional approval? Gone. We now go to war at a whim, or the opinion of a president. We actually are dumb enough to say that we are depending on our generals in the war theater to tell us whether we should increase or decrease our presence in the war! Now that is as dumb as asking Bret Favre! What general in his right mind is going to say "Oh, cut my troops in half please!!" What do generals do? They make war. How do they get advancement and more power? They make war. And they do it like Bret Favre, by being exposed to about as much danger as a taxi driver or deliveryman. Others are fighting and dying, or coming home with PTSD so bad they will never have any bliss in their lives. We are torturing the wrong people. We have a whole line of bankers, generals and even sports stars whole could profit us all mightily with just a few turns of the screw.
Maybe, one day, prior to the coming disaster in 2012 (Oh please God, bring it on), the common man can celebrate the common man again. They guy or gal working to actually make cars, the people building our roads, the nurses, baristas, waiters and cooks. And those people living in storage lockers (until they are outed and thrown in the streets, because you can't be allowed to live in a storage locker!) who are somehow trying to held life together instead of becoming insurgents.
And that is what is next if we do not make some changes. We will have insurgency here in this country, and we will be no more able to stop it here than we were able to in Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan. We have a fiction of stopping it in Iraq, and we are going to try applying that same fiction to Afghanistan. We fortify the main population centers, then construct armored conduits to connect them, travelled by heavily armored vehicles. Then we claim that our 'surge' has worked. The natives laugh at us, as they properly should. We are not at war with Iraq or the Taliban. We are at war with our own self-imposed ignorance, and our willingness to glorify the ephemeral stupidity of stardom.
http://www.from-the-chateau-dif.blogspot.com
CLOSER TO GOD
Sea of Heartbreak
II
The water has always meant a lot to me. Off the beaches of Oahu I made my mark, surfing Queens and body-surfing Sandy. Victoria Falls called me from the far Northern canyons of Upper Kenya. Its thunder only evident form reports spoken by people who’d been there. I was not one of them, but I was going to be. I just knew it. But I couldn’t go before I finished what I was about.
Jomo Kenatta Airport in Nairobi is a mess. But so is the whole country. I drove the Pajero there, following my drop of the Lebanese. I had dumped him on the edge of town, to be taken back to where ever the hell he was going to hide out, by local taxi. Burt, Tom and Walt were my concern. I needed them gone in order to consider and act upon what I had learned from the nearly dead Lebanese. I threaded my way through traffic in front of the airport, easily and fluidly, like a man piloting a vehicle in which he really did not care who he violated or struck. I was all of that.
I pulled over at the SAS sign. I waited for the three men, who had been my mission companions, to depart. They too could take cabs to wherever they were going, as they would not be getting rid of their armament in the airport proper. Tom and Walt got out without comment. Burt stayed in the font passenger seat, however. I motioned for him to go, but he simply shook his head. I shrugged. What could I do? The mission was over. The team dispersed independently following a mission. There was no precedent for the way the man was acting.
When the Pajero’s doors were closed I sat in silence, the car’s tiny six cylinder engine humming quietly.
"Well, what the hell is this? Where do you want me to deliver you?" My questions had merit and made sense. Burt chose not to interpret things that way.
"Take me wherever you're going," he said, nonsensically.
I massaged my forehead with my left hand. Some local in uniform pounded on the car’s curbside fender. I put the shift lever in first and pulled away into the sea of chaotic traffic I so much enjoyed swimming in. I did not drive with a purpose. Instead I eased along with the other ill-mannered drivers avoiding contact.
“I’m headed toward the embassy,” I said, not comprehending why Burt was still in my car.
“Figured…” he replied, “but that’s probably a bad idea.”
I was stunned by his response. I pulled the Pajero to the side of the road, running two wheels up over a cracked and broken curb. We sat there. Women walked by with stuff piled four feet high atop their heads. Passing cars beeped in anger at the slight blockage our vehicle left by the side of Outer Ring Road. They were not without complaint. Only Mombasa Road was busier.
“Is Burt your real name?” I asked, not looking at the man.
“Is Jack Donner yours?” he replied. I nodded.
“Bertram Lauren, like the clothing guy, Burt said. I gave him my hand and he took it.
“You want to tell me about it?” I began, hoping for anything, but not expecting the response I got.
“You have a reputation, with that big brain of yours,” he began, telling me without saying it that he had known my real name all along. Burt was removing himself from the realm of normal Knuckle-dragger stock very quickly. “Back there, out on the Serengeti, you missed something. I thought you’d catch it, but you didn’t.” He didn’t go on, although I waited.
I thought back to our operation.
“The suppressor,” I said, tentatively. I had caught it subliminally. We had been given an assignment out on the Veld of Africa. There was no need for a suppressor. Silencers were large, uncomfortable to carry and difficult to properly conceal. They also identified anybody who had one as a potential professional killer. Why had Burt carried one, then installed it with me by his side? I turned my head to look at the bigger man, for the first time since leaving the airport. I felt a slight taste of fear. I didn’t like where our conversation was going. At all. But I said nothing. There was nothing for me to do but wait. I was unarmed and trapped inside a vehicle with someone who was not only well armed but a coldly-capable professional killer.
“I don’t work for State. Whatever that guy said once about a warm bucket of spit, well he should have been talking about State.” Burt spoke the words in obvious frustration, not looking over at me. “And you’re an agent for Christ’s sake. We don’t do agents. Not ever.”
“John Garner, Vice-President under Roosevelt,” I replied, still uncertain of what might happen. “He was talking about the Vice-Presidency as a job, but I understand what you mean.” Burt’s comment about me being an agent, therefore not target material, had jarred me. I had responded from the analytical quadrant.
“Why’d you talk to the guy? The mission brief said that we were, under no circumstances, to question or listen to the man.” Burt made his comments as if under great duress. I hoped that he was not still making up his mind about what he would or would not do.
“I found our instructions to be questionable,” I replied, honestly. “The mission is mine once the operation begins. You know the rules. The dead agent was named Smith. Ex-Marine. Decorated. Class act. He had a wife and three kids. You?”
Burt looked over and met my eyes.
“No, I got nobody,” he stated, his voice flat.
“Me either,” I replied, my voice pitched to the same tone.
“For them, then,” I finished. Burt shook his head.
“Brain damage would be too light a phrase to use for this kind of thing. More like brain death. We don’t know anything. We have nothing. What the hell can we do?”
I breathed easier. It didn’t seem, for the moment, like I was going to die on the front seat of a rental Pajero in downtown Nairobi. The car’s air-conditioned interior was, again, cool enough.
“Haggerty. He’s who we have,” I said.
“Just what do you know?” Burt asked.
“The Lebanese was dead on Haggerty’s orders. He was the one sent in to out Smith. That’s what he said, and I believe him. But what the hell was Smith doing in that prison? And why did he get taken out for the revelation? By who? No, all we have is Haggerty. What were your instructions, and from who?” I waited for Burt to consider. The kind of thing we had become involved in was off the books. There was no Agency support or approval for what we were discussing.
“My Control Officer told me that there was a possibility that you might go rogue,” Burt said, his mouth twisted into a strange smile. “Its not unheard of you know, especially with…well… your track record.”
Somehow, Haggerty, probably with the support of one of the many Assistant Secretaries of State, had reached deep into Agency Operations. The violation was monumental. I reflected for a moment. Such things happened in movies, like ‘Three Days of the Condor,’ but not in real life. Not in my experience, or the experience of any of the senior agents I had ever known.
“I’m going to the embassy. You in or out?” I put my right hand on the knob of the center shift lever.
“I don’t know,” Burt answered, but his own hand did not grab for the door handle. I put the Pajero in gear and headed North on Outer Ring. I drove the car carefully, trying to think of every detail of what had happened.
“Why was the Lebanese out there in the game park? What was he doing with the Masai? They aren’t normally violent, but they had him pretty painfully tied,and in bad shape.”
I talked to myself, as Burt made no comments at all. The roads to the embassy took us through Muthaiga where the Safari Park Hotel was located. Once a retreat for British Army Officers it had grown to be my favorite hotel in all of Africa, when I could cheat the Agency out of enough money to stay there.
The embassy loomed up from one side of the road we took winding around the Kenya Teachers facility. The place was built like the concrete and steel blockhouse it had been intended to be. The previous embassy, taken out by terrorist bombs years before, had been downtown by the Railroad Station. The embassy was totally obvious in its American ugliness, even without the huge U.S. flag waving out front.
I drove around the side of the structure where a big driveway led to the underground garage. It was blocked near its entrance by huge movable chunks of stone. I stopped to wait. We didn’t wait long. A Marine Staff Sergeant walked up the ramp to our car. I sighed in relief. It was Stevens, the contingent commander. I’d known him in Hong Kong when he’d been a Buck Sergent. I wondered if he’d recognize me.
“You packing, sir?” he asked, making no motion to salute, instead moving up and down the side of the Pajero to see what he could of the vehicle. I said that we were.
“Get out and go down the driveway. They’ll see you on the camera and let you in. Leave the keys.” We did as instructed, my faith in the United States Marine Corps once more confirmed. Once inside we waited for the Staff Sergeant to return, while a PFC and a Corporal stood silently by, checking us out but not being invasive about it, or patting us down. The Staff Sergeant was buzzed through the steel door. He tossed the car keys to me, then walked past us through an open door.
“Better see the DCM about what to do. The Communications Director is out of embassy,” he threw over his shoulder. I moved to follow him, waving Burt to accompany me. The Deputy Chief of Mission was second only to Ambassador Haggerty himself. I understood the Staff Sergeant’s predicament. The Communications Director was code for Embassy CIA contact. Every embassy and consulate in the world had one. Without him to front for us, someone of upper management power would have to make decisions, which fit into my plans exactly.
Three flights of stairs up at a run brought us to a hallway inlaid with exotic woods, common to Eastern Africa. Burt and I stood catching our breath. Stevens saluted crisply, pointed at an open office doorway a few yards away, then departed back down the stairway. I walked into the office, its floor covered with a beautiful baby-blue rug so thick that my entrance was made in complete silence.
A middle-aged woman sat at a large desk facing the door, flanked by two smaller desks nearby, where two younger women sat. None of them paid immediate attention to our presence. I noted that atop the larger desk was a small nameplate with the word “Haggerty” carved across it, and presumed we were in the Ambassador’s outer office.
“Is Haggerty in?” I asked, deliberately failing to use the man’s title. I wasn’t in a formal mood. The woman looked up. A Bose Sound Machine behind here played some country tune as she appraised us. “How did I lose you, oh where did I fail…” came out of the expensive little device.
“Who’s asking?” she asked, “And what are you doing up here unannounced?”
“I’m Jack Donner and this is Burt,” I waved one hand back, as I spoke, my tone mildly respectful. I ignored her second question. I also noticed her color and expression change.
“Who let you in?” she asked, as if inquiring about pet animals, her voice becoming more demanding. The other two women stopped working and looked at us, reacting to her tone.
“Is Haggerty here or not?” I overrode her, raising my voice slightly.
“I’m Haggerty,” she shot back, standing. I noted that she was a beautiful well-formed woman.
“You’re Paul Haggerty?” I was shocked.
“No, I’m his ex-wife, Joyce. I’m the DCM.”
“They allow that?” I squeaked out.
“Who?” she said, leaning aggressively toward me, putting her hands down on the surface of the desk. I just shook my head, nonplussed, then decided to regroup. State was a weird place I hated and would never understand.
“I’m here about Smith, who died a few days back. You probably heard something about that.” I moved a step closer to her.
“Leave us,” she stood, sweeping her arm toward the two other women, who instantly filed out, closing the thick wooden door behind them. “I presume, for whatever misplaced reason, that you’re here to report the accomplishment of your mission?”
I stared at Joyce Haggerty in wonder. I had never been a part of any direct mission discussions with embassy staff before. It was unheard of in my experience.
“It would seem that just about everyone knows about that mission,” I countered, indicating my surprise, as I thought more deeply about it.
“Did you perform it successfully?” She said, crossing her arms, and looking back at me with a severe expression.
“Maybe you misunderstood something, either before, or right this minute,” I said. “I don’t report to you. I don’t take orders or mission assignments from you, and I sure as hell don’t discuss the results of such matters with you, or your husband, for that matter.”
“Ex-husband,” she said, raising her own voice. “So what are you doing here then?”
Her comment stopped me. What was I doing there? I was coming right back at a man who had somehow co-opted operations people at CIA to risk taking me out if I failed to perform to specification on a mission. But I wasn’t going to say that.
“The Lebanese told me Paul sent him in, to give the information about Smith.”
Slowly, Joyce returned to her seat, looking pensive.
“What are you going to do?” She asked, after a minute. I was surprised again. She was giving me nothing by her responses. Did she know? What did she know? How deep was she in? It was almost like being debriefed by an Agency Control Officer. You gave, you did not get. I liked her. She was bright, good-looking, enough miles on her to give her wisdom, and she didn’t take any shit.
“Paul and I are going to have a little talk,” I told her, truthfully.
“About what?” she came back.
“About what Smith was doing in that prison. About what the Lebanese was doing in that park. About why an experienced agent was killed in an allied country that couldn’t give a damn about his affiliations. And some other personal stuff.”
I didn’t tell her that I was going to have a possibly terminal discussion about someone who had ordered me dead.
“Don’t,” she stated. I saw honesty in her expression. “Go your way and leave it alone. It isn’t your job or your fight. Get on an airplane. You don’t want to be anywhere near this. You’re not that good, no matter what your reputation, otherwise you’d have just done your job.”
She knew I had not allowed the Lebanese to be killed. The longer I was in front of the woman the more she was getting out of me.
“Where is he?” I asked.
“He’s not here,” she responded, shaking her head.
“That’s not what I asked, I pushed her. Burt moved to my side.
“I’m not telling you. I need him undamaged, for the moment, and I don’t like the look of your pet gorilla.” I marveled at the woman’s courage, even if she was in her own office inside a U.S. Embassy. She knew she wasn’t in front of regular diplomatic personnel. She also had let me know that she either knew, or had guessed, that I might have good reason to be violently disposed toward her ex-husband.
“You know this is going to resolution in some fashion. I can’t let it go, not and survive out here. Look at us. We have nowhere else to take this, and I think you know it.” I looked at the man standing next to me, to make sure Joyce had not reached him emotionally, but I need not have bothered. Burt had reverted to his Knuckle-dragger role. He stood impassive, as if there had been no insult intended by the woman’s harsh words. I looked back at her, and we waited.
The CD repeated its play, the same song coming up again; “…the lights in the harbor don’t shine for me…” played quietly through the room.
“What is that song?” I asked.
“Its called ‘Sea of Heartbreak,’ she answered.
“How very appropriate,” I said. She sniffed, but I saw a fracture in her visage when she did. Quickly, she turned her head, then leaned forward to take a call. Somewhere inside the hardened career woman was a heart.
Burt and I waited some more. Finally, she was done.
“I’ll take you to him,” Joyce relented. She stood, then walked around the desk. She wore a knee length blue dress. Classy. I liked the effect, but I gave no indication. I didn’t have to, as she read me anyway.
“I don’t like people who do what you do, or in your line of work, so don’t bother with the phony charm. You have no morals left, if you had any to start with.” I could not help smiling at that. Not that she was wrong, I hadn’t resolved such issues for myself yet, but that she would say it to my face made her more attractive still.
“Just tell us where he is and you can avoid being seen in our company,” I said, not being able to avoid smiling at her last insult.
“He’s at the Safari Park Hotel, not far from here, but you’ll never find him without me, and besides, I don’t trust you…and Brutus here,” she pointed at Burt. “Nobody else out there will know what you are. None of you people look like you should.”
I wondered how I should look. We followed her, as she opened the door and headed for the stairs. It was fun to follow her. For some unaccountable reason her company made me feel human for the first time since the mission had begun.
Blood might flow across the wooden floors of the Safari Park but I would endeavor to see that it wasn’t hers. She moved fast down the stairs, getting ahead of us.
“How did I lose you, oh where did I fail…” I sang, almost inaudibly.
“On the sea of heartbreak,” Burt whispered, coming down the stairs right behind me.
Copyright 2009
Give Me Strength
I
God is out there somewhere. I don’t know where. Once, when I was in an African prison I yelled back at some would-be reborn Christian preacher: “God has never come to my bunk.” He had been, as is the custom of reborn preachers, ministers or flock-leaders, indicating that God had spoken to him in the night, and instructed him regarding something I ought to do. For some reason God never instructs His acolytes in what they ought to do on their own, other than raise money and make members of the flock serve them.
It does not say, anywhere in the Bible, that God will not give you a burden too heavy to carry. That common saying is just pure bullshit. Think about the death camps in Germany, just for a second, and consider such idiotic God-driven nonsense. I do not believe you can ‘Trust in God,’ or even ‘Let go and let God.’ I think those are buzz-phrases created by reborn idiots. I do believe that if you pray to Him for strength, however, that He will definitely send you more problems so you can grow stronger in attempting to deal with them. My own life is proof of that little homily.
Nobody knows I smoke. Not one soul living on this planet. A couple of people used to know, but they died shortly after they discovered my secret. I don’t like to execute people without some ceremony. Instead of offering the intended victim a cigarette, however, I have one myself. They get the extra time while I finish the process of smoking it. That’s only fair. I smoke Marlboro cigarettes. The long ones with filters. Like the guy on the horse in those old ads. He died of lung cancer, I heard sometime back. I don’t think I’m going to die of lung cancer. I picked a career, or rather it picked me, that will likely preclude that.
It was raining just beyond my tucked-in corner of the railroad station. I smoked there because the station was filled only with members of the native population.
They knew I was nearby, back pressed firmly into the peeling wooden boards, but they made believe I didn’t exist. To me that was the same as not knowing anything.
About my smoking secret, I mean. The natives were like Knuckle-draggers, they didn’t count as living souls. They were just there, like the rocks, the trees or even the rain. I’m not prejudiced on the basis of color. I’m just prejudiced on the basis of the business I’m in.
When it rains in Nairobi, it rains for quite some time. The water coming down is clean, however, unlike the rest of the dusty dirty city. I love Nairobi, don’t get me wrong. And I love the rain in Nairobi because it drives everyone inside, then cleans the streets and universally broken sidewalks. I walk in the rain. I breathe it in. Plus its cool. Nairobi is pretty hot most of the time. I like it cool, but I don’t get many assignments up on the Bering Sea, or down in Tierra del Fuego. Africa is kind of my beat. And I’m not a Knuckle-dragger either. I don’t do the wet stuff at all. I’m one of the rather more rare guys who have guys who do that sort of thing. Maybe there are a few women who do what I do, I don’t know. I’ve never met one, or even heard of one, but these are changing times. Some of those guys, the Knuckle-draggers, were who I was standing near the rain waiting for. The train was overdue out of Lake Victoria, stopping in Nairobi, before making its way down to Mombasa.
Across the tracks I could see old rusting steam engines sitting on bare ground. Steam had given way to diesel ten years back. I remember riding the steam- powered train down to Mombasa, so long ago. The night had been filled with burning cinders, falling down and away past the dining car windows. It had not seemed romantic at the time, but in retrospect it was all of that, and more. I wistfully drew in the last of the Marlboro smoke, then pinched out the stub and replaced it in my red and white cardboard pack. I would leave no evidence of my secret behind, not that anyone around me cared. Kenyan natives are great. They pretty much respect and appreciate white folk, like me. They give deference and they don’t get in your face, as in some other cultures.
The train came in. Just like that. No whistle of warning. I was not in Europe or America. The rules were different. The old cars rocked slowly to a stop, compressed air hissing out from the brakes, resembling steam, up and down the line. I waited.
The natives crammed aboard the train as the passengers tried to get off. It was a mess of water-soaked bedlam, but it wasn’t noisy. The people of Kenya are a quiet lot. Another feature I like.
My guys climbed down just as the whistle of the engine finally sounded, indicating that the train was pulling out. Conductors in blue sweaters and black caps pushed and pulled stragglers aboard. The train creaked as it eased from the station. I turned and headed for the gray Nissan Pajero parked illegally in front. It was an old rental thing with a five speed, unlocked because there were no locks, only holes in all the doors. But I had left nothing inside. I carried nothing except my cigarettes, money and a passport. The rental papers for the car were not even there, as I wouldn’t return the vehicle, just call and tell the agency where to pick it up. My guys would have stuff. It was what they did. If they got caught with any of it, then they’d have to count on some other operatives to get them out of trouble. Or not.
I drove. Two of them in the back and one up front with me. We didn’t talk. They knew the mission. We were not, and were not going to be, friends. If there was to be violence I didn’t want to be grieving over the loss of any of them, or they of me.
Fucking New Guy Syndrome we’d called it, after the Nam. And it had its proper place in our work.
I drove fast. As fast as a three liter Pajero would go, which was not that fast at all.
One hundred and forty kilometers per hour was about max, which was about seventy miles an hour, or so. The roads out of Nairobi were built for about half that, however, so it was a rough scary ride. The guys gave no indication of discomfort or fear, however. It was that kind of business.
We were headed for a village just South of the big National Wildlife Park outside of Nairobi. I never could remember the park’s name. The village is a Masai place. The Masai are tall lanky natives who wear weird throw-back attire and carry long ugly spears. The men, anyway. And they stink to high heaven, as they never ever wash. Ever. I like them, but then, my former wife had once told me that I had no sense of smell. I guess didn’t have much taste in women either. I’d never found any who trusted me. And I couldn’t be around people who didn’t trust me. If they were ‘inside the wire’ kind of women, part of my tribe, then my trustworthiness should have been beyond question. I trusted them. But women don’t trust so easy, I discovered. So I was alone. I worked in a field that did not lend itself well to either trust or believability. Alone was not okay, but it simply had to do.
The village appeared next to the road about twenty clicks on the other side of the park. The inside of the Pajero was filled with dust, even though the rain had done a lot to cut it back. The park had been nothing but dirt roads and dust. Rain only sealed the top inch of the dust, and the dust went down a good four inches deeper than that. The village was a ram-shackle affair of branch constructed hovels, mud huts and half-thatched roofs behind flimsy fences. The fences were to keep animals in, not out. No self-respecting lion would ever allow itself the indignity of being speared full of holes on the interior open plaza of a Masai village.
I drove through a likely hole in the fence. Chickens and a few dogs scattered. I knocked down a few small pieces of stacked junk, and maybe a three-stone fireplace or two. I parked in the center of the village and shut off the engine. We sat. Nobody appeared. The Knuckle-dragger next to me spoke for the first time.
“I’m Burt, and these are Tom and Walt,” he said, as he pointed toward the back seat.
I didn't laugh when a cloud of dust formed near the end of his extended finger.
“Hey,” I responded, looking carefully at each of them. We would not be friends, but our mutual survival was now dependent upon the performance of each of us. Missions involving violence seldom ever went smoothly. Aberrantly strange things were always cropping up.
“The target is being held somewhere nearby. I don’t know where. Our contact is supposed to meet us here." I said the words with finality. We were not going to go social at this tense point of the mission.
I looked at my Omega. It was the same watch the astronauts had worn to the moon. Or so the salesman had told me when I’d purchased it. It was pretty damned accurate, I had to admit. Our source had twenty minutes to make contact or I’d scrub the mission. While we waited, we were targets ourselves. It was a risk that came with the territory. We waited in the vehicle. It wasn’t likely that any force was going to take out four white guys, armed to the teeth, sitting inside a rental four-wheel-drive in the middle of a pacified Masai village. Getting out could lead to booby-traps or other hidden hazards. We waited inside.
A tall Masai warrior appeared between two of the hovels to our front. He motioned with his characteristic spear. The four of us got out of the vehicle. I looked at my guys to assure myself that nobody was coming out locked and loaded. Violence escalates from the things you do before violence happens, I knew. We needed to be just four white guys walking, escorted, across the Serengeti. Everyone was cool.
We followed the nearly seven foot tall native through the saw grass just East of the village. It was a well-beaten path so we had no trouble. We could have followed the tribesman with blinders on, as his aroma was that overpowering, even twenty feet back. I do have a sense of smell I thought, sending a mental message to my ex-wife.
We came upon a clearing at the base of one of those huge Baobab trees, its trunk at least twenty feet thick. A man lay on his side next to the tree, his hands tied behind him with what appeared to be vines. The man was white, wearing the phony safari gear so common to visiting tourists. Even his canvas hat was there, on the ground next to him. I was surprised by that, as the Masai are known for stealing anything not tied, glued or welded down. The warrior stood next to the laying man, planting the base of his spear down on the man’s torso. He looked at me, but said nothing.
I pulled a two inch stack of Kenyan Shillings from my back pocket. I’d exchanged two hundred dollars worth of U.S. currency at the rail station. I handed the warrior the cash. He grabbed it, then walked away immediately, back toward the village. I waited until the five of us were the only humans evident out on the Savannah. Then I crouched.
“You alive?” I asked the downed man. His eyes opened. He nodded vigorously. I stepped back. Automatically, Tom and Walt grabbed the man by his shoulders and roughly seated him, back to the Baobab trunk. They backed away.
“Burt,” I whispered. Carefully, Burt took a medium sized automatic out from under his rain coat and handed it to me. Then he reached inside the coat a second time and came out with a polished black cylinder. I handed the automatic back. Burt finished assembling the silenced killing machine.
“We’re not supposed to talk to you, but what the hell, I never do exactly what they tell me to do anyway,” I offered to the man against the tree, by way of passing time, as I moved to get my pack of Marlboros out.
“I did it,” the man whispered out. “I know you’re his people. I did it. I went to that prison and told them about him. I admit it. But I had to do it. If I didn’t do it he’d have ruined my family. Our business would have been gone. We have nowhere to go. We’re Lebanese. We’re not welcome anywhere. We don’t even have passports.
I even dressed like a tourist, just like he told me.”
I sat on my haunches, no longer reaching for my box of cigarettes. The mission was to take out the man who had deliberately informed on one of our agents, getting that agent very dead, indeed. Payback was uncommon to the intelligence business, I knew, at least payback in violence, but there were certain circumstances. This had appeared to be one of them, as the dead agent had also been a highly decorated former Marine Officer and well connected politically. Unlike myself, he’d also been rumored to be well-liked. The fact that I’d been instructed not to talk to the target had not gone down well with me, although I had not remarked at the time. If I have to be involved in someone’s passing, I like to make certain that some sort of justice in the universe is being balanced.
“What have you got for me?” I asked. The Lebanese just looked back at me.
“If we are not to end this all right here, then you have to give me some reason why your passing should not take place.” I stared into the man’s black eyes, seeing nothing but truth. Everything thing he’d said so far had reeked of truth, and that made me very uncomfortable.
“I don’t have anything,” the man said, his chin sagging to his chest.
“Who was going to destroy your family?” I prompted him. He looked up. Then he looked from Burt to the other two Knuckle-draggers, then back at me. I stood, both knees and the small of my back in pain at the same time. I grunted.
“Take a hike out on the Serengeti for a bit,” I said to Burt. He grimaced, then handed the suppressed weapon to me. I took it. I knew the three of them probably had six more weapons among them, or more. Knuckledraggers were big on toys and equipment, cramming diplomatic sacks with all manner of pyrotechnics.
I waited for the guys to get a good thirty yards down the path, before I squatted back down.
“Paul Haggerty,” the Lebanese expelled with one soft breath. I said nothing back.
I didn’t have another question. I was too shocked. Paul Haggerty was the American
Ambassador to Kenya. Ambassadors never ever get involved in operational agency business, at least I had never heard of it happening before. For an Ambassador to be involved with the killing of a field agent was almost too impossible to consider.
“I understand that you have to kill me. But my family. They won’t be hurt, will they?
I have a wife and four children.” He tried to go on but I held up one hand in front of his face.
“Do you have any idea why Paul would want the agent dead?” The Lebanese shook his head violently. “Do you have any idea who killed our man?” I followed up, beginning to wonder exactly what had taken place in that prison outside of Nairobi.
Kenya was not exactly an enemy of the United States. The Soviets were long gone.
Terrorism was mostly a geographically limiting situation, excepting 9/11, of course.
Why the revelation that a man was an agent of the CIA would get him killed in a place like Kenya had no comforting answer that I could come up with.
The man shook his head again. I believed everything he’d told me. But I didn’t know what to do with it.
I rose to my feet once again with same groan. I stepped away from the Baobad and saw Burt pacing in the distance, nervously. If I got myself killed it would not look good in the after-action report, for him, or the other guys. They had to do what I said, but they also had to protect me. I waved him back.
“Cut him loose,” I said, when the three had shambled back. I handed the silenced weapon to Burt. “We won’t be needing that.”
Tom and Walt got the Lebanese to his feet and cut through the vines. The man glanced around him like he was some sort of hunted bird, looking for the next direction of attack.
“What do I do?” he asked, finally. I took the eighteen remaining hundred dollar bills of mission cash from my front pocket. I put the small stack into his hand.
“We’re taking you back to your family. Then you’re going to disappear for a few weeks while I get this all sorted out. And I mean disappear. Do you understand?”
“You did not know?” the Lebanese asked me, looking at my three guys, without going on. I shook my head.
“There will be trouble, I think,” he said, with an air of finality.
The village was as dead when we returned, as it had been when we’d arrived. It was obvious that no one had touched the Pajero. The villagers wanted nothing to do with us. As I drove madly toward Nairobi, the Lebanese wedged in between Tom and Walt in the back seat, I supposed that nobody in the U.S. Embassy was going to want anything to do with us either.
copyright 2009
This happened at Jack Kingston's Health Care Town Hall, Valdosta, GA, 28 Sep 2009: a veteran was booed for saying respect the president. To Kingston's credit, he shushed the crowd.The speaker was George Rhynes, who is one of the organizers of a rally tomorrow, Saturday 17 October 2009, on the Lowndes County courthouse steps, Valdosta, Georgia. Invitations on
Things are pretty dire. Have you noticed? The economy continues (totally) in the toilet, with respect to home values, jobs, banking, credit and just about everything else except gas prices and road repairs. We are doing nothing about the Peak Oil Problem we see coming at us like one of those old fashioned train wrecks. The world climate situation is huge, seemingly unavoidable and extremely unsettling. And what are we doing about all of that? We are watching television. And waiting. And then watching some more television. We are listening to the likes of self-described geniuses who are about as bright as those idiotic children behind the counter at Apple stores. Ben Stein, a flat-voiced and flat-brained comedian. Bill Bennett, fat-mouthed and flabby example of a Complete American Wastrel. Every once and awhile we get a paid-off and quieted Paul Krugman and whatever peaceful creature Maureen Dowd has become.
Our leadership seems lost amongst the chaos of Congress and the Courts. We are wandering around the world, blundering from one continent to another, one country after another without a mission.
Well, here is the mission. It is time.
1. We have to fund and then build the National Ignition Facility right now. Like yesterday. Only fusion power will be at the core of our resurgence. Only fusion power can give us the kind of control of the universe that we have to have to save ourselves and then get out there to begin our conquest of the galaxy. Sounds totally whacked, does it not? Especially in light of what is going on today. Forget trillions for defense, or for propping up banks or even health care. We are not going to need any of those things unless we get more control over this planet and ourselves. And fusion gives us the energy to do just that. It is the only thing that can do it. And we are ready to do it right this minute!
2. We have to go back to space. Right now. It is from out there that we must use the tools of observation and operations to impact the planet. Yes, the Moon and Mars and more space stations. A lot of them. We also need this for our spirit. We were never meant to survive without adventure. We thrive on it and we have nowhere to gain it anymore except in idiotic insane wars that tear us apart.
3. Tesla, yeah that whacked out genius of a hundred years ago, was right. About AC electricity, of course, but also about the provision of electricity. With our new fusion we make it free. That is right. All homes in this country (of reasonable size) get free electricity. That is heat in the winter and cooling in the summer. All. And we have plugs for our electric cars. We have already paid for the electricity many times over. We developed the damn stuff, then had it taken away. Tesla was right. Westinghouse was an asshole and a thief.
4. Along with that home comes a medical guarantee of care, as well as unemployment coverage (for like three years) and disability coverage. All Americans. We can do this if we simply turn on the thieves, butdon't forget we'll need them. We need them and a lot of our criminals (currently, and stupidly, contained in all of these prisons across the land) to build our missiles and spaceships. Yeah, everyone gets a job. We can leave our violent criminals inside and even maybe build some special care centers again for our mentally ill. And don't forget those guys and gals down in Dixie. We need them too. They build kick-ass space gear and we need people who know how to use guns, as well.
5. We build some real transportation. That nutty idiot Lyndon LaRouche only had two things right. Fusion (maybe his support of it in the sixties hurt us more than we know, because he was such a nut) and a Bridge or Tunnel across the Bering Straits into Russia. We need our Railroads back, big time, to carry all this gear. And we need the help of our brothers and sisters. The Mexicans and the Canadians. We need to get rid of all these stupid border restrictions. On both borders. We cross freely to work and live, if we care to. Americans get special privileges for living here as citizens (how about a house, electricity, et al?). We need these folks as this is going to be one prodigious effort to save the planet and become what we are meant to be. And those Russians too. They are a tremendous culture, if you get out of the dumb Moscow mindset group. Screw Putin. He's nothing, once we make our mind up. Lead, follow or get out of the way. Imagine high speed rail to anyplace in the world!
6. We build the eighth and ninth fleets. Whole fleets of combat carrier and support ships. But we do not arm them. We send them out to help people, fully staffed with medical, food, energy, all of it. We can call the carriers the Mother Theresa and the Albert Sweitzer instead of the bellicose leaders names we are currently stuck with. Think about how much good these two nuclear forces could do to help people. The tsunami situation. New Orleans. And we could staff it with all paid volunteers. Guys and gals back from Iraq or even Vietnam, in need of redemption or just a great feeling job! And this world would love us. And they'd be right to do so.
7. Forget about the current wars. There are none if we do not wage them. So we lost the war with Al-Quida, or whoever the hell they really are. Or we won it. You can't fight a war against an idea or concept unless you just want to stay at war forever. Forget it. Come home. Just let idiots who pull off stuff like 911 know that we are going to blow off the head of anyone we find doing junk like that. And this time we'll look for them instead of use them to do things our rotten leadership could not have done without them. Screw Iran and North Korea. We do not need them. If we hear from them again we'll glad blow them, continuously, into the stone age, nuclear or otherwise. Nobody is bringing a nuke into the U.S. Not anymore. But we are not telling anybody we can detect them. All of them. Why not? Because we are lost in our stupid set of secrecy rules that only keep things secret from the American Public! That keeps you, that public, from making any changes to the rules that need to be changed or we are all going to die awful deaths, or maybe just our children!!!
8. Stop outsourcing. It did not work. We get no service at all and the products suck. We all know that, but have been conditioned to buy them. Walmart has to change or go away. Just the facts of life. And you have to make them. Or you can die poor in a poisoned environment. In source carefully from here on. The employers are the keys. They must be controlled by laws on who they can hire. We do not need national I.D. cards for citizens, but we need them for all outsiders visiting, and we need to know where those people are on a regular basis. This is not rocket science. It is just wisdom.
9. Get must educators back on television. Whatever we have to do we must do here with this television nightmare that is helping deaden and kill us. I know, I write for it. These idiot pundits must go. They need to be replaced by real historians and real credentialed people. The Rush Limbaughs, and former sportscasters, and other complete idiots need to be retired post haste. And we need to get control of the companies that control these network and cable outlets. It does not matter if this infringes on the press for a bit. We are all going to die miserably if we do not. What is the choice? We do not have freedom of the press anymore. We have freedom of corporate expression. So we change it. We go in and commit surgery. If we have to commit surgery on our morally destitute Congress and crypto-right Supreme Court, then we do it. Our life is at stake. Dangerous times, yes, as this system has gotten us this far. We do not need to lose it, but we need to modify what is going on within it.
10. We have lost all of our small information sources. And most of those were independent. We did have some freedom of the press. We still do, out here on the internet (which television is trying to change by using internet porn and child molesters as their straw enemies). But we have lost all our small newspapers across the country. They now only do ads. The ethnic papers are gone too. Here, on the internet, it is very very difficult to get a 'voice' no matter what you do. Maybe fifty people will read this blog and I have been blogging pretty consistently for almost three years. Big money sweeps in here too (like Drudge and Huffington) and just takes over viewership. And you can burn up all your time on the internet, just trying to build a following. Most of us have to make a living. We need to do something to bring back our information delivery systems. We have been deliberately denied any way to communicate with one another in meaningful ways. We can only build a movement to do something through the existent structure and look what happened in this last election! Nothing! And I like Obama! I am writing this blog (initially) on his site!
We can do all this if we will. If a message such as this can go out, be evaluated, and then acted upon. The ten things I list are very pro-active, very aggressive, and very timely and doable. If we will. We can do this. We have the mythology that will allow us to reach down and then do something stupendous. We are the only culture on the planet that can. Because this is America.
http://www.themastodosn.com
What is happening with our economy is almost wholly the fault of our banking establishment. Yes, there are other factors which have made a tremendous impact; outsourcing jobs and factories, insourcing labor that sends most of its money elsewhere, inattention to long range projects in the areas of space and science, but the major blame for this continuing debacle rests with our system of banking. I say system because, as with our energy related industries, the banks have slowly pulled everything together into a net of monopoly. Interest rates are basically the same no matter what bank you go to. Fees are the same. Charges are the same. And local service, just as we saw happen in the filling station part of the energy monopoly, has all but dried up. No local bank manager will confess to any fault at all. All decisions are made by some obscure unreachable home office committee. How convenient. How deliberately convenient.
There are some things that Americans do not really understand about this banking system which has developed. The most important fact that blows right by almost all of us is that banks are constantly doing business with one another. The flow. When you sell a house, for example, and get the money from the sale, you get it from one bank and it goes right into another bank. You do not keep the cash. In fact, you are told that it is foolish to cash the check and keep the money yourself at home. Security is mentioned, along with not making any money on your money. You get your paycheck and cash it. But you don't cash it. You put it into another bank. Once you begin to understand this 'flow' of money among all the banks some things begin to stick out. One of them is about that cash. My father, who is wealthy, went into his little Wisconsin bank, where he has been a major depositor for many many years, and asked to withdraw fifty thousand dollars in cash from his checking account (balance; several hundred thousand). He wanted to withdraw cash because I told him (brashly) that they wouldn't give it to him. He got scared, so he went in. Being my Dad, he also wanted to prove me wrong.
He came out of that bank a different man. The bank promised to give him the cash within five days. They indicated that they were just too small to keep that kind of cash on hand. Since I had told my Dad that that is what the banker would say, he went right at the man. To no avail. You see, I had told my Dad that the man would lie. Of course the bank had fifty thousand dollars in cash on hand, at the very least. But they would not give it to a depositor because they didn't have to, and also because they wanted to buffer such decisions with time. Also, Dad was shocked to have the banker ask him what he wanted the money for. I had predicted that question, as well. Dad got his money the next day. He phoned me about what had happened, which surprised me, but Dad was that scared. I had him go to the bank's main branch, walk up to the Chief Executive Banker and threaten to buy the bank (he has that kind of money), and then fire each and every member of management. They gave him his cash. If you don't believe this story, go to your own branch and ask for a lot of cash!
Since the banks are just flowing the money around and around, from one bank to another, there does not have to be money. Only small amounts of the real stuff are necessary to meet demands like my Dad's. The rest of the 'money' is all paper promises. And that has helped lead us into this nightmare. Once we left the gold standard in 1971 (under that cretin Nixon) the paper promises made by the banks did not have to be backed by anything other than their word. And we have recently (again!) discovered just how worthless the word of bankers can be.
Bankers are supposed to make money by taking in deposits, accounting for them, and then loaning out the deposited money at a higher rate of return (saving account deposit pays about 2% today, while home loans run about 6%, and a car loans about 8%). Not much difference between returns on deposited money and loaned out money today. And that is a tip-off as to how banks are really making their money. They are making money from charges and fees. Overdraft charges run about 35.00 per overdraft. And the invention of the ATM card has changed everything. We used to use checks, but now checks only amount to less than ten per cent of consumer financial transactions. The banks have figured out how to manipulated ATM card balances. They credit deposits differently than withdrawals. That is their major tool. If they can get your balance down below the level of an ATM charge, which they go ahead and allow you to make even though their system tells them that you don't have sufficient money in the bank to cover the charge, then they can hit you for 35.00 bucks. If you are at the shopping center, using your card, and the card keeps working, you can see where one day's use might land you. You use the card five or six times, charge less than a hundred bucks, but get hit with hundreds of dollars worth of 'overdraft' charges. Clever. You see, the check you had deposited to cover all this, which you assumed was in the account because (after all) your card worked fine, was not to be credited until the next day. Very clever and very deliberate action on the part of your wonderful home grown bank.
And it goes on and on. The banks own the credit card companies. They have those companies (all based in the Dakotas where the laws are written to keep cardholders from having any chance of winning a court case) that send out the credit card bill timed perfectly so that when you get and pay the bill, even if you pay it the day you get it, your payment is received late. Then you get hit with another 35 buck charge, plus they can retroactively raise the interest rate on your entire balance by ten percent or so, and then raise it on other cards not even associated with the card you paid 'late' on! Forget about the heinous usury charges of PayDay loan places. Your very own bank can charge you a thousand percent, and get away with it, without even the smallest of consumer complaints.
Are you getting it yet? This outright, and quite legal, theft perpetrated by our Dr. Jekyll seeming 'good old boy' bankers is so outrageous that the networks and cable television will not even entertain discussing it. The media is not afraid of riots or the shredding of bank executive lives. Nope. The networks and cable television broadcasters are owned by the same bank system, in different variations, that is screwing the public to death.
How about this new set of banking regulations which the Federal Reserve is right now undertaking, in order to prevent another 'meltdown,' as we supposedly saw a year ago? Front page of the New York Times on Saturday. Upper right column. Go back and read it. Whatever regulations they enact will remain confidential, in order to guard the privacy of the banking system, and whatever supervision of the new regulations, should their be any, will be confidential as well. How does stuff like that make it into a major news publication and raise no ire? No marching on Washington. Nobody at all, except me, crying into this cold harsh night? Krugman, on this very day, did attack the banks, but made certain he would not discuss any of this. He went after the fact that banking executives have not curtailed their practice of paying each other great bonus amounts for short term gains, and then doing nothing when those gains prove to be illusory over time. Krugman, who knows this stuff well, was too cowardly to mention the 'elephant in the living room' part of those short term gain bonuses. And that is this; the bonus money is generated from short term gains that are not real. They are lies on paper, generated for the single purpose of paying out a huge bonus to the thieves that came up with the paper. We have all watched this happen. It has been right out in front of us, time after time. No banking executives have gone to court, trial or prison. You see, it is not illegal. When Bernie Madof was originally cornered he said something very valid: "We are all Ponzi Schemer's in the financial system now." He was right. However, if you have a bank as your cover, then Ponzi Schemes are quite legal. And confidential, as well.
I encourage you to go to your local bank branch and tell anything of this article to that man or woman running the branch. It is probably very close to being the last time you will be able to do it. Pretty soon that person will not speak the language very well anymore (remember the gas stations that used to be?), and gradually (as with credit card acceptance by filling station machines) there will be no need to have anybody at branches for you to say anything to anymore. The guys who wrote the screenplay for the move "The Matrix" were dead-on.
I don't bother with Matt Drudge much. I look at his work like I look at that of Ann Coulter, Charles Krauthammer, or even that Beck fella over on Fox. After watching the Coulter/Maher special a few weeks back, I have a better understanding of these media icons. And phonies. On the Maher special, he and Coulter commiserated with one another about how they really did not believe much in anything of what they presented. In spite of my mileage, I was a bit shocked. These people are all carrion feeders. The more outrageous they can make their message, the more attention they get, and therefore the more money they make. That they are helping our culture slip right into the morass is besides the point to them. They have truly allowed themselves, or quite possibly formed themselves, into cultural slime.
Matt Drudge ran a headline this day that was an outrage. The headline to his online rag was "Michelle Obama wears Bondage Belt." You see, Michelle, our First Lady, wore a slotted black leather belt she had just acquired. A follow on article to the Bondage crap was about how big a carbon footprint her recent purchases left behind her. Yes, this is a Republican piece of garbage online newspaper that is holding the President's wife up as an abuser of the economy, not to mention associated with certain sexual deviants of the social order.
What can be said of such things? Can you imagine the goose-stepping clowns of the Bush administration standing for such treatment of the former First Lady? As much as she resembled a female version of Gumby, nobody commented. Certainly nothing was said that associated that woman with any sexual performance...whatever. But then, maybe it is repressed sexuality that drives the Republican Party political machine. Certainly it cannot be a dedicated plan to return this country to economic sanity. That is not in their 'carbon foot-printed' game plan.
Jimmy Carter comes out and indicates that a lot of nasty criticism of Obama is because he is Black. And the Republicans deny that, of course. Prejudice is never delivered straight across the table. It is always cloaked. I met a young soldier in Hawaii who referred to President Obama as President Osama. I let it go twice. The third time, I counseled with him. I told him that I was entitled to say such a thing, as a private citizen, but he was not. The President is his Commander in Chief. I offered to allow him to remain in the Army if he would mend his ways. He accepted, of course, as I was not kidding and he somehow knew that (his wife was there, right next to him at the bar, and elbowing the hell out of him). Once he accepted my kind offer to remain an E-4 I asked him where he was from...already having guessed the answer. He was from South Carolina. I confronted him about the possibility that his negative view of President Obama was because of race. He denied that, so I asked him what preferable job a man like Obama might be allowed to hold if he was not the president. He gave himself away with his answer: "If that man wasn't president he'd be unemployed, living off his wife or the state, like the rest of them."
I had no answer for that. I cannot transplant spines into men who lack them. I cannot inject brains into craniums that were birthed without them. And I cannot do anything with an E-4 lout raised in the refined prejudice still found all over the American South.
Hell, I am mad at Obama too. We are still in Iraq. We are still in Afghanistan. We are renewing the rotten Patriot Act Provisions which stole our freedoms. We are not going after the torturers. We are not throwing that admitted felon Dick Cheney into any kind of prison. And we are all caught up about the issue of healthcare, a problem that rises only to the trillion dollar level, when we have a forty trillion dollar economic mess taking aim at the country like the dead black bores of a twelve gauge shotgun. And Obama is leading the cheer that we are past that problem. Poppycock.
But Obama is all we've got. He is bright. He is smooth. He is cool as a cucumber. Will he buck the horrid system that has built up since the end of WWII? Will he exercise intellect and heart in his decisions? Will he pull us back from the edge of this ever-approaching cliff, or merely guide us gently over that edge?
I don't know, but I do know that Matt Drudge is a low life classless cretin and deserves to be poor in this oppressively harsh capitalistic heaven we call home. Michelle does not deserve Drudge and neither do we, unless one particular part of him is to be served up on a platter.
The elevator was too slow in descending twenty floors to the tower lobby. Peter Sweeney thought another bad thought about the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. But his complaint about the Otis elevators was secondary to the livid anger he felt about the fifty dollar charge which was going to be levied against him for departing his room two hours after checkout. Paying six hundred dollars a night, per room, and he had three, was no small deal over the course of a week. The writer's convention had been a wonderful success, but that did little to lesson his anger. The doors opened and he hit the lobby, walking fast to where the concierge desk was located. An ebullient Japanese woman was on duty. She was a terribly cute butterball of a little thing, who Sweeney liked, but that did not deter him.
"They're charging me a fifty dollar late checkout fee for staying in my room until my flight's ready on Tuesday," he began. The woman, who's name tag read Malani, looked up from her sitting position across the desk with wide open eyes of surprise. "This is not fair and I want that charge waived!" Sweeney demanded, his uncommon emotion causing the young woman to blink and nod her head in agreement.
"I will call the management," she declared, reaching for the telephone. "i will speak to my manager, and even his manager, if necessary. I will get the charge waived. I completely agree and apologize. You are a very valuable guest and I will get this changed."
Sweeney deflated. He had nothing more to add, so he turned abruptly and went back to the elevators. Up in his room he changed into his best aloha shirt and long pants. He was to keynote the conference in half an hour. He rolled ideas around in his mind on how to begin his hour long talk. Nothing came to his mind. Once dressed, and properly adjusted using his full length mirror, he returned to the slow Otis machines. He was calmer on the way down, certain that Malani would take care of the idiotic late charge and put that problem to rest.
This time Peter approached the concierge desk more gently, more like his old affable self. He smiled at Malani. She got up from the desk and came around to meet him. Then she began to cry. Great tears coursed down her beautiful Asian cheeks. Then she began to sob as she talked.
"I could not get the charges waived. My manager said no, so I called his manager, who also said no. He said I would lose my job if I brought up the subject again. I am so very very sorry that I have failed you."
Sweeney stood rooted to the spot, unable to take the scene in fully at first. The woman cried on, tears falling down onto the front of her pink uniform. Unconsciously, he moved forward and hugged the sobbing woman.
"Its okay. Fifty dollars does not mean that much to me. I have plenty of money. I don't know what I was thinking." Slowly he released Malani, then stepped back.
"Really, its okay?" the woman said, her voice husky from crying.
Sweeney nodded, smiling a smile he did not feel. He felt more like crying, but turned to retrace his steps to the elevators instead. The Otis cage did not seem so slow on the way up to floor twenty. Once in his room he sat at the end of his bed to think. The incident effected him deeply. He was not the kind of man who brought hotel staff to tears. He hated such people. What had he done? He stared at the dresser before him. Atop the dresser sat the distinctive box of new Alexandre Dumas pen, made by the Mont Blanc Company. It had cost him eight hundred dollars, and that was on Ebay. He intended to give it to the Pulitzer Prize Winner who would be attending his keynote speech. He hoped to win his way into the man's heart, or at least get his attention.
Peter stood up. He approached the dresser. Then he moved quickly, grabbing the box and heading back to the lobby while checking his watch. He had only ten minutes to get to the Monarch Room to deliver his speech. The elevators seemed running in molasses until opening, once again, at the lobby level. He walked quickly back to the desk where Malani sat. She looked up with a return of trepidation in her expression. But Sweeney smiled, and then held out the box.
"Please accept this gift from me. I do appreciate you, your service, and what you tried to do on my behalf."
Malani arose, stepped around the desk and took the box into both hands. She opened it. A small sound escaped her lips. Then she stared up into Sweeney's eyes with a look of shocked adoration. She closed the box as she bent into a deep bow. Her hands, however, came up with box held up in front of her.
"Thank you," she whispered, "I will live up to the value of this gift."
Sweeney walked away, his heart lifting, the smile on his face turning into a real smile. The crowd applauded as he entered the Monarch Room, his introduction already provided. He took the extended microphone and stepped onto the stage. He looked out over the expectant faces of the new budding authors.
"Thank you," he said, "I will live up to the value of this gift." As he spoke he realized that a small Japanese woman working behind the concierge counter at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel had changed his life.
http://www.themastodons.co
Today, a group of progressive Senate Democrats led by Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI, Chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution) introduced the Justice Act, to fix the horid Patriot Act, protect your liberty, protect your privacy, and restore Constitutional principles.
A complete copy of their announcement follows. I will keep you posted as developments proceed; you will need to support this legislation with your own Senators and later, Representative.
- Mark Dorlester
-----
Press Release:
SENATORS INTRODUCE PATRIOT ACT FIXES TO SAFEGUARD AMERICANS’ RIGHTS
JUSTICE Act, Introduced on Constitution Day 2009, Would Fix Long Standing Problems with the PATRIOT Act and Other Surveillance Laws
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senators Russ Feingold (D-WI), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Jon Tester (D-MT), Tom Udall (D-NM), Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Daniel Akaka (D-HI) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) have introduced legislation to fix problems with surveillance laws that threaten the rights and liberties of American citizens. The Judicious Use of Surveillance Tools In Counterterrorism Efforts (JUSTICE) Act would reform the USA PATRIOT Act, the FISA Amendments Act and other surveillance authorities to protect Americans’ constitutional rights, while preserving the powers of our government to fight terrorism.
The JUSTICE Act reforms include more effective checks on government searches of Americans’ personal records, the “sneak and peek” search provision of the PATRIOT Act, “John Doe” roving wiretaps and other overbroad authorities. The bill will also reform the FISA Amendments Act, passed last year, by repealing the retroactive immunity provision, preventing “bulk collection” of the contents of Americans’ international communications, and prohibiting “reverse targeting” of innocent Americans. And the bill enables better oversight of the use of National Security Letters (NSLs) after the Department of Justice Inspector General issued reports detailing the misuse and abuse of the NSLs. The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on Wednesday, September 23rd, on reauthorization of the USA PATRIOT Act.
“Every single member of Congress wants to give our law enforcement and intelligence officials the tools they need to keep Americans safe,” said Feingold. “But with the PATRIOT Act up for reauthorization, we should take this opportunity to fix the flaws in our surveillance laws once and for all. The JUSTICE Act permits the government to conduct necessary surveillance, but within a framework of accountability and oversight. It ensures both that our government has the tools to keep us safe, and that the privacy and civil liberties of innocent Americans will be protected. When he was in the Senate, President Obama was a strong ally on these issues, and I look forward to working with his administration to find common ground on commonsense reforms.”
“The Government must use every legal tool available to protect us from the threat of global terrorism. But when those tools override Americans’ fundamental rights and liberties, we run the very real risk of never getting them back,” Durbin said. “As we move toward reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act, we’re proposing commonsense changes to better protect our most basic constitutional rights. Our bill strikes a careful balance between the law enforcement powers needed to combat terrorism and the legal protections required to safeguard American liberties.”
"Like a lot of Montanans, I have serious concerns about the PATRIOT Act and how it was implemented,” Tester said. “What this bill will do is add commonsense so we can fight terrorism without ignoring the Constitution and without invading the privacy and civil rights of law-abiding Americans."
“In recent years, I believe our government has failed to protect the constitutional right to privacy for American citizens,” Tom Udall said. “The JUSTICE Act strikes the right balance between respecting the needs of our law enforcement to pursue suspected terrorists and upholding the rights of law-abiding citizens to live free from unnecessary government intrusion in their lives. I firmly believe we can keep our nation secure without infringing on the inherent rights of the American people. ”
“We must provide law enforcement with the tools they need to protect our country, and do so in a way that also safeguards Americans’ rights. This legislation addresses both of these important objectives by ensuring our security and upholding our cherished constitutional protections,” Bingaman said.
“Every American understands that we have got to do every single thing we can to protect the American people from terrorist attacks. There is no debate about that. Some of us believe, however, that we can be successful in doing that while we uphold the rule of law, while we uphold the Constitution of this country, which has made us the envy of the world,” Sanders said.
Senator Akaka said: “The JUSTICE Act will allow intelligence agents to monitor terrorism suspects while putting checks in place to ensure that law-abiding Americans’ privacy and civil liberties are protected.”
“The JUSTICE Act rights some of the basic wrongs of the PATRIOT Act, which became a poster child for the Bush Administration’s lack of respect for Americans’ privacy rights,” said Wyden. “This bill is designed to keep every law-abiding American free from arbitrary government surveillance. At the same time, it gives law enforcement the agility needed to go after actual terrorists and spies who would do our country harm.”
Fact Sheet JUSTICE Act Of 2009
The Judicious Use of Surveillance Tools In Counterterrorism Efforts (JUSTICE) Act would reform the USA PATRIOT Act, the FISA Amendments Act and other surveillance authorities to protect the constitutional rights of Americans while ensuring the government has the powers it needs to fight terrorism and collect intelligence.
Title I – Reasonable Safeguards to Protect the Privacy of Americans’ Records
Sections 101-106 – National Security Letters
The bill rewrites the National Security Letter (NSL) statutes to ensure the FBI can obtain basic information without a court order, but also adds reasonable safeguards to ensure NSLs are only used to obtain records of people who have some connection to terrorism or espionage, and to provide meaningful, constitutionally sound judicial review of NSLs and associated gag orders.
Section 107 – Section 215 Orders
The bill would reauthorize the use of Section 215 business records orders under FISA, but with additional checks and balances to ensure these orders are only used to obtain records of people who have some connection to terrorism or espionage, and to provide meaningful, constitutionally sound judicial review of Section 215 orders and associated gag orders.
Title II – Reasonable Safeguards to Protect the Privacy of Americans’ Homes
Section 201 – “Sneak & Peek” Searches
The bill would retain the Patriot Act’s authorization of “sneak and peek” criminal searches but eliminate the overbroad catch-all provision that allows these secret searches in virtually any criminal case. It would shorten the presumptive time limits for notification, and create a statutory exclusionary rule.
Title III – Reasonable Safeguards to Protect the Privacy of Americans’ Communications
Section 301 – FISA Roving Wiretaps
The bill would reauthorize roving FISA wiretaps, but eliminate the possibility of “John Doe” roving wiretaps that identify neither the person nor the phone to be wiretapped. It would require agents to ascertain the presence of the target of a roving wiretap before beginning surveillance.
Section 302 – Pen Registers and Trap and Trace Devices
The bill would retain the Patriot Act’s expansion of the FISA and criminal pen/trap authorities to cover electronic communications, but would allow pen/traps to be used only to obtain information about people who have some connection to terrorism or espionage. It would impose additional procedural safeguards to serve as a check on these authorities.
Section 303 – Telecommunications Immunity
The bill would repeal the retroactive immunity provision in the FISA Amendments Act.
Section 304 – Bulk Collection
The bill retains the new warrantless authorities in the FISA Amendments Act but would prevent the government from using that law to conduct “bulk collection” of the contents of communications, including all communications between the United States and the rest of the world.
Section 305 – Reverse Targeting
The bill would ensure that the overseas warrantless collection authorities of the FISA Amendments Act are not used as a pretext to target Americans in the U.S.
Section 306 – Use of Unlawfully Obtained Information
The bill would limit the government’s use of information about Americans obtained under FISA Amendments Act procedures that the FISA Court later determines to be unlawful, while giving the court flexibility to allow such information to be used in appropriate cases.
Section 307 – Protections for International Communications of Americans
The bill would amend the FISA Amendments Act to create safeguards for communications not related to terrorism that the government knows have one end in the United States.
Section 308 – Computer Trespass
The bill would guard against abuse of a warrantless surveillance authority in the Patriot Act that allows computer owners who are subject to denial of service attacks or other episodes of hacking to give the government permission to monitor trespassers on their systems.
Title IV – Improvements to Further Congressional and Judicial Oversight
Section 401 – FISA Public Reporting
The bill would require limited additional public reporting on the use of FISA.
Section 402 – Use of FISA Evidence
The bill would apply the Classified Information Procedures Act to the use of FISA evidence in criminal cases, and allow the use of protective orders and other security measures in civil cases, to ensure that courts have discretion to allow litigants access to information where appropriate while still protecting sensitive information.
Section 403 – Nationwide Court Orders
The bill would permit a recipient of a nationwide court order to challenge it either in the district where it was issued or in the district where the recipient is located.
Title V – Improvements to Further Effective, Focused Investigations
Section 501 – Domestic Terrorism
The Patriot Act’s overbroad definition of domestic terrorism could cover acts of civil disobedience by political organizations. The bill would limit the qualifying offenses for domestic terrorism to those that constitute a federal crime of terrorism.
Section 502 – Material Support
The bill would amend the overly broad criminal definition of material support for terrorism by specifying that a person must know or intend the support provided will be used for terrorist activity.
A health care plan to expand the insurance industry and hurt the sick and the poor. It sure does look like special interests are going to win. I am not sure that it has been everybody sitting at the table transparently. It does not even seem like the American people really had representatives just our corporations. I guess it is a good thing corporations are imortal and really don't need health care.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/29988909/sick_and_wrong/7
It looks like we are going to have a health care bill everyone will hate other than the health insurance industry and pharmacuetical countries.
On this Labor Day morning I sent this feedback through whitehouse.gov:
I campaigned for you, like many others. We elected you and majorities of Democrats bigger than Newt Gingrich ever saw to get the job done: end the war, close gitmo, end warrantless wiretapping, implement universal health care, and the other things you said you would do.I'm sure it's hard once you get there, but gitmo is still open and there's a lot of talk that you're thinking of abandoning the public option on health care. A public option is already a compromise. The real solution, as you yourself once said, is single-payer. Medicare for everyone!You can't please everyone. You really can't please Republicans in Congress, because they're not bargaining in good faith: their only goal is to defeat you by defeating health care and anything else you propose. Trying to do it in a bipartisan way was laudable. It didn't work. You held out your hand and they bit it. Time to get the job done.FDR didn't pass the New Deal by asking Republicans to approve every detail. He accepted opposition and actively campaigned to defeat it and to defeat those Congress members in the next election. His biographer Jean Edward Smith said recently:“This fixation on securing bipartisan support for healthcare reform suggests that the Democratic Party has forgotten how to govern and the White House has forgotten how to lead.”LBJ didn't pass Medicare by giving away the store to the Republicans. He said what he wanted and he twisted arms until he got it. If your Blue Dogs are standing in your way tell them to get in line if they want your support for their next bill or at the next election.You're losing us, your progressive base. We are the great majority of people in this country who want real health care reform, not some compromise with the profit-gouging insurers. Nobody else should have to die so a CEO can get a bonus.It's time to lead, Mr. President. It's time for you and the Democrats in Congress to do the job you said you would do; the job we elected you to do.
BANKRUPTCIES Every year one million Americans claim bankruptcy due to a major medical issue Senator Bernie Sanders, Thom Hartmann Show 8. 2009INSURANCE CAPS Once your cap is used say in a major medicalyou are virtually uninsurable afterwards.Representative Slaughter, Ron ReaganShow 9/1. 2009POST CLAIM UNDERWRITINGYou pay your premiums faithfully but when you have a major medical matter,the company drops you from your policy.Ex insuance broker, Stephanie Miller Show8/17. 2009CLAIM DENIALYou pay your premiums faithfully, something major happens. Your claim was denied. A bonus was paid to the employee for denying your claim. Caller to Stephanie Miller Show8/17. 2009LOSE YOUR JOB LOSE YOUR COVERAGE / PORTABILITYThen, if ill, this becomes a lapse in coverage and a possible pre existing condition.PRE EXISTING CONDITION There are disabled persons and others for whom will never be insurable. How could this happen in America? WORKMANS COMP/ MALPRACTICE CASES could be virtually be eliminated.COST INCREASES TIES UP COMMERCEThe average business can spend as much as 20% of their costs on health insurance making them unable to compete with companies from other countries that do have nationalized coverage. USA 18-22% GDP is health care while otherTHE COST OF NON INSURED The average insured can pay as much as 1000. Per year more to compensate for those who are uninsured and relegated to using the emergency room as a source of primary care for which a tooth abscess can become a 250,000 surgery.
I keep thinking about the movie I saw recently regarding Julia Child. Julia Child was a 'regular' woman. A bit too tall, too broad, too heavy and filled with way too much hilarious intellectual insight. She would never get a television show again, and I don't care how great a cook she was. We are well into the 'pretty woman' culture, which has been served up to us by Hollywood and the mainstream media. We get Kelly Rippa, and her 'right in your face' sexual presentation. She is another human twig, trotted out as an example of what women should be, in order to appear attractive at a distance. That she is unhealthy in her thinness is never even discussed, except in rare tabloids. In other shows, and in movies, we get the same thing. five foot eight women who weigh a hundred pounds or less. They, of course, also serve in very macho roles. They kick butt on all manner of men, in spite of the obvious fact that they would break like twigs if ever faced with a real man in a real physical situation, and I don't care how much study and practice might be honed into the woman using martial arts techniques. the marital arts are subject to physics like everything else.
The internet is not helping either. Internet porn is about forty percent of the traffic out here I have read. The women who are used in the videos and still photos are all the same. They all look like Kelly Rippa in some way or another. How are real women to compete with these sick miniaturized Amazons? How is our species to continue, at least in this culture, if men find regular women unattractive? And how can regular women be treated with respect if they have to stack themselves up against the caricatures presented in all forms of this pervasive media? Hence the latest attacks on women's rights. These attacks are shunted off into the area of reborn Christian revival, but in reality, they are all over the place. Just like many of these protests about health care, which are not protests against health care at all, but attacks against Obama (in particular, about the race of Obama), attacks on Roe v. Wade are attacks against women. They have little to do with the life of the unborn. Any more than the health 'opponents' really care about health care. Look at the makeup of the audiences of those town hall meetings. Almost all the people there are well past the age where they depend upon private medical care at all. They are on medicare. So why are they at the meetings? One might think it is because fears have been built up about the aged losing their benefits because of the coming national plan. But that is not true at all. The old people are not really worried about that. No, they want that black guy out of the White House. And they are supported by armed idiots carrying assault rifles all around them. Why we do not have a national law that reads "no guns are to be carried or possessed by citizens within one mile of the president, unless he is just passing through the neighborhood," I have not a clue.
But back to women. Have you noticed that all the new newscasters coming aboard are lovely young women? Almost one and all. Older men are titillated. And what can anybody really say, without it seeming that the complainer is prejudiced against women having these high paying jobs with such grand visibility (at substantially lower wages than their male co-anchors, I might add)? But the move is more of the same we are having pushed at us. The women are all cut from the same cookie cutter template. Thin. Young. Beautiful. Examples of how all women should be. Without that ever being said.
I want regular women back on television and in the movies. I want people like Julia Child. I want women that I can look up to because they are smart and verbally adroit. I want to observe and think of women with intellect and style. I am sick of Hollywood plastic. Sick of flat foreheads with not a single line. Sick of bust lines that are just idiotic. The creatures of Hollywood are abnormal, unhealthy and do a disservice to all women in this country. And I am sick of them being shoved in front of me at every opportunity to be held up as some sort of goal for all to emulate.
It reminds me of what has happened to us with sports stardom. Bret Favre. Tiger Woods. And all the rest of our professional 'sports' players. They are among the highest paid beings on this planet and what do they do? They move a ball, whatever kind of ball, up and down a measured piece of turf in some controlled way. They have been doing that, and only that, all of their lives, since they were small children. They are nothing else. They are ball controllers and movers. And our culture goes nuts over them. They are our people of courage, our people of worth, integrity and honor. Which they are anything but. But the truth does not matter. There they are, with all that money and power, and the bully pulpit anytime they want to stand up and take hold of it.
Our culture is frozen in time. We have run into a barrier we could never have conceived of. We have run into the monster of creation we invented to entertain us, but which now is slowly and inexorably forcing us to accept mythology over science, lies above truth, and scripted fiction over reality. We are fast becoming a culture of entertainment where the word 'work' is applied to others, located just outside (having come up from Mexico) or much further away (think India and China). And the results of this rapid glacial shift are coming in. This economy is not coming back. Got that? It will only come back when the engine of work, reality and results that built it is restarted, and then run with renewed vigor at high rpm.
Public option is a must in health care reform! The house bills are closer to what is needed. Coop's unless seeded with billions of dollars and millions of members will not be able to offer plans in a more affordable way than a private insurer.
1. They will not have enough members to negotaite better rates
2. They will not have suffcient capital
So plans would be structured with huge deductables and copays which make people put off preventive care.
I really think it is time for the president to take a leadership role say he will not sign a bill with a strong public option. It will help us in the field to state clearly the benifit of reform. Many lives are at stake 18,000 die because of limited access to health care. We fought war of choice for 3 trillion and 1000's of lives. It is time to fight a real enemy it is in our border our broken health system.
The 3 princples 1 affordablity, 2. choice, 3. cost reduction are fine. I have canvased for with these points are a start but they will not be realized with out the public option. Maybe the wishy washy stance on the bully pultpit is just to get the bill out of the senate. But is does not seem like clever strategy is the answer. Clever strategy is not leadership. With out a clear method of achieving these it weaken both the desire and will to work for this plan.
Our base can turn out with leadership it is forthright and honest and counters mis information. Our president really needs express leadership and let the public now that only viable and simple mechnism is a public option. The american people need and desire leadership and true reform!
Let's keep working. I am glad the my rep. who i visited Rep Ablbio Sires took a leadership stance and wrote a sign the letter to secretary of HHS and let it be know he will stand with the people and support the public option.
As an entrpenuer one knows it is a huge burden if even possilbe to offer health care in the first 2 years. It is a risk start ups and start upemployee's are often put in when creating jobs. A national healthcare option would allow small business to create many more new jobs if there was a public option! Also allow our large corporations to compete.
